Winged Death's Heads and Whirl Rosettes

The Old Burying Ground in Cromwell is the town's oldest historic cemetery, established in 1713 when the community — then known as the Middletown Upper Houses — secured its own parish and no longer needed to cross the flood-prone Sebethe River for burials. The two-acre yard holds deep significance for early New England history, genealogy, and colonial art, preserving slate and sandstone markers carved with the region's earliest funerary motifs. Most notable is the presence of three generations of the Johnson family carvers — Thomas Johnson I, II and III — whose work helped define the Connecticut tradition of sandstone gravestone carving and made the burying ground a key destination for early American stonecraft. - AsNotedIn