Friends Cemetery [NT008]

NEWPORT HISTORICAL CEMETERY #: NT008 FRIENDS CEMETERY NEWPORT RI Location: 15 ft TILDEN & FEKE STREETS at TEL pole # 5X 150 burials NOTE: A refreshing open space in a very built-up neighborhood, the cemetery is surrounded by a chain link fence. The sign is so badly rusted that it can hardly be read; it is propped up against the fence. Clearly many of the stones have disappeared as there are wide grassy patches. Presumably many of the people noted in Quaker records are actually buried here---but we may never know because the stones have gone or were, in the early Quaker way, never inscribed. Some of the names in the database come from Alden Beaman's transcription (AGB), some from the continuing efforts of Len Panaggio (LP). A note in Quaker records for Jacob Mott who died in 1779 at age 88 (perhaps in Newport, perhaps not) gives an interesting glimpse of the past of this cemetery. It says that he was buried in his own ground, "the meeting house and yard [this cemetery] occupied by Hessians."