Northfield Center Cemetery
cemetery in Northfield, Massachusetts, USA
The Northfield Center Cemetery is a historic cemetery located at the western terminus of Parker Avenue in Northfield, Massachusetts. Established in 1686, it is the town's first burying ground, with documented graves dating to 1714. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Description and history
The Northfield Center Cemetery is located a short way west of the town center, at the western end of Parker Avenue. It is bounded on the east by a railroad right of way, and on the west by a wooded embankment leading down to the flood plain of the Connecticut River. It is 7.64-acre (3.09 ha) in size, and consists of roughly level ground, fringed with trees on the three sides not abutting the railroad tracks. The main entrance is at the southeast corner, and a narrow paved road provides a roughly oval circulation pattern through the grounds.
The cemetery was established in 1686, and is Northfield's first burying ground. Northfield was abandoned twice, because of King Philip's War in the 1670s and King William's War in the 1690s, and was not permanently resettled until 1714. The gravesite of Zechariah Field, one of the 1714 settlers, has been identified in the graveyard.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7059365. Authority coordinates are 42.695, -72.461. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1686, 1714 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Northfield Center Cemetery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.