Burials in Ridgewood Cemetery, North Andover, Massachusetts, 1848-1950

This database contains the names of approximately 3,800 individuals whose names were copied from gravestones in Ridgewood Cemetery, North Andover, Mass., in the summer of 1936 by Lenora White McQuesten, then State Chairman of the D.A.R. Massachusetts Genealogical Records Committee. She further checked the material and brought it up to date in the summer of 1938. Her transcription was compared with the records of the Ridgewood Cemetery Association, and to each gravestone record was added the lot number and the name of the owner.

Ridgewood is North Andover’s third burying ground. The first, or North Parish Burying Ground (designated as g. r. 1 in the published Vital Records of Andover, Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849), on Academy Road, near Osgood Street, contains some 250 stones and was used until the early 1800s. The Second Burying Ground, on the east side of Academy Road (g. r. 6 in the Vital Records) was established in 1817 and was active into the twentieth century, but most of the stones date from the 1800s. In 1849 plans for a third cemetery were inaugurated by a group of twenty-two subscribers, each pledging financial support of $100. The Andover Cemetery Association was organized 31 January 1850 with fifteen original proprietors. Eleven acres on the south side of Salem Street were purchased, and during the summer the land was surveyed and laid out. It was consecrated as the Andover Cemetery on 10 October 1850, and Capt. Francis Ingalls, who died 9 November 1850, was the first adult to be buried in the new cemetery.

On 7 April 1855 North Andover separated from Andover to form a separate town, and in 1875 the name of the cemetery was changed from Andover Cemetery to its present name, Ridgewood Cemetery. Over the years it has been enlarged considerably, and is still an active cemetery, with an office and maintenance building on the premises. Though the cemetery association that manages Ridgewood is non-sectarian, the cemetery itself continues to be the principal Protestant burial place in the town, and descendants of many of North Andover’s early families are interred within its confines.

The cemetery is beautifully maintained and landscaped. It is located on the south side of Salem Street, about a quarter-mile east of North Andover Center. A mortared stone wall marks the cemetery’s boundary along Salem Street, and the main entrance is flanked by a beautiful pair of bronze gates, erected in 1908 and presented by Mr. George H. Gilbert in memory of his aunt, Lavinia Farnham. The older stones are to be found near the entrance and along the ridge along Salem Street, with newer monuments further down the hill towards the back.

Copies of the typescript volume of tombstone inscriptions are available at the New England Historic Genealogical Society; the D.A.R. Library, Washington, D.C.; Stevens Memorial Library, North Andover, Mass.; and at the cemetery. The NEHGS copy is part of the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections Department at NEHGS, call number MS 70 NOR 52 [Mss Project Entry].

Further inquiries can be directed to the cemetery office at (978) 685-5027.

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