Ye Antientist Burial Ground in New London, Connecticut is one of the earliest graveyards in New England and the oldest colonial cemetery in New London County. The hillside lot of 1.5 acres (6,000 m²) adjoins the original site of the settlement's first meeting house. From here, the visitor has a broad view to the east of the Thames River and, on the far shore, the heights of Groton.
The lot had been reserved for a burying ground and recorded as such in the summer of 1645. The first decedent "of mature age" was duly interred there in 1652. But it is the ordinance of June 6, 1653 that legally sets the place apart and declares, "It shall ever bee for a Common Buriall place, and never be impropriated by any."
A later record notes the appointment of the sexton:
17th century New London was yet a rough and isolated corner of early colonial Connecticut. Private interments were not customary, and this was the only common burial place.
As time wore away the unadorned burial hillocks, the older were "covered over with fresh deposits of the dead, so that the numbers here cannot be estimated by the evidences that now remain. ... Yet here undoubtably [sic] were deposited nearly the whole generation of our first settlers" (Prentis and Caulkins 1899, pp. 5,7).
Coordinates: 41°21′33″N 72°6′1″W / 41.35917°N 72.10028°W / 41.35917; -72.10028
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