Burying Ground in District No. 2, Gerry

About the year 1828, the Holland Land Company conveyed to William
Alverson, Stoddart Cannon, and James Schofield, grandfather of Gen.
John M. Schofield as trustees and members of the Methodist society in
Gerry, one hundred acres of land on Lot 53, situate a little northwest
of the center of the town. In 1829, or soon after, with the proceeds of
the sale of a portion of it, a Methodist meeting house was built. It
stood upon this land, on the west side of the highway, about two miles
south of Sinclairville. Adjacent to it a burying ground, consisting of
about one-third of an acre, was at the time set apart from this tract
and dedicated to the public. The church was the first built in the
Cassadaga Valley, and one of the first Methodist meeting houses in
Chautauqua county. Long since, it has passed away, as have the earnest
and faithful fathers of the little society that built it. They sleep in
the burial place near the spot where the church so dear to them was
reared. Previous to the building of the church, there had been three
deaths in this community – John McCullough, who died in May, 1827, and
his nephew John McCullough, who died in November of the same year, and
a child of Chauncey Shaw. They were first buried a little distance from
the church site, on Lot 46, near to its south line, on land now owned
by John Heminger. After the dedication of the burial ground, they were
disinterred and buried there. The oldest grave stone is a Damon stone,
erected at the grave of Roany Scott, who died January 31st, 1829. Of
the early members of this society of Methodists, whose influence was so
long felt in the town of Gerry, are buried in this place, James R.
Alverson, his wife Damaris, and his brother William, Gilbert Strong,
who died at the age of ninety-two. Here also are buried John
McCullough, James Langworthy, Robert Lenox, James Heath, David Strong,
James Woods, Dr. Japtha L. Heminger, David Cowden, Ephraim Belknap, and
Samuel Woods, the last four soldiers of the war of 1812. Charles.
Lenox, a soldier of the war of the Rebellion, is buried here. Among
those here interred is Susannah Woods, who died June 15, 1873, at the
advanced age of one hundred years, eight months, and twenty-two days.
In all there are about eighty interments in the ground.

 

Source: Page(s) 17-18, History of Evergreen Cemetery.  by Obed
Edson. Sinclairville, New York, Press of the Commercial, 1890.