Byron Cemetery

Byron Cemetery originated with the 1837 interment of Theodore H. Provost, the son of one of Byron’s founders. According to local historians, Chippewa lived on this site until it became a cemetery. Byron Cemetery contains some sixteen hundred nineteenth century graves. The remains of fifty-six Civil War soldiers and veterans are interred here, including those of James Sleeth, a surgeon during the war who later became a lawyer and newspaper publisher. A large pedestal with crossed rifles honors unknown Civil War dead., Fieldstones from local farms, urns, obelisks, and monuments with common Christian symbols such as angels and weeping willows mark the graves in Byron Cemetery. In keeping with Judeo-Christian tradition, burials are oriented east to west. A mysterious exception is the grave of Richard Tubman, a thirty-five-year-old Irish horse groom. His grave, marked by a pulpit with a closed book, is oriented north to south. A seated maiden honors Ellen May Tower, a Spanish-American War nurse who died of typhoid fever in Puerto Rico in 1898.