They’re commonplace in the older cemeteries around my way. There are also smaller versions, usually (but not always) with a surname on the lintel. I’ve always thought they were an earlier version of a family crypt.
New York isn’t part of New England, and cemetaries are all over the place in New England anyway - there’s often more than one even in a small town, so the fact that one might be on a main road isn’t all that remarkable.
No, the true hallmark of being in New England is that you can drive on all the main roads in town and never find the post office.
Absolutely. You don’t want your cemetary up close to the rest of the town, that’s valuable real estate that you can build houses or raise crops on. Put it on the outskirts of the town where you won’t have to walk through it to get to your fields. You can tell a bit more about the community’s development history based on where the cemetary is, too. If you look at Providence, RI (by no means a “small town”), their major cemetary seems to be surrounded by homes and businesses. When it was built, the North Burial Ground was placed so far outside of the city (if you scroll down on the map you’ll see the original part of Providence surrounding Brown University) that no one will “ever” want to build there. So much for urban planning of the later 1800s.
Rhode Island is a little odd with their cemetary placement. Most of the cemetaries in the rest of New England were associated with a church of some type. Thus, they were a central location where everyone in town (since everyone practiced the same religion in the same place) would be buried for many generations. In olde Rhode Island, bucking the religion trend, it was common to bury your family in a plot on your property. That’s why you’ll see small cemetaries on the sides of highways in the middle of nowhere, or even two on an airport - old family plots where the family no longer lives.
There’s a little, very old, cemetary here in Central NY right on the corner of two roads, across from the railroad tracks, about 1/4 mile from a high school. It is SO beautiful, especially in the fall with all the leaves. The earliest burial date I could find was 1818. I’m surprised it hasn’t been plowed over to make room for an auto parts store or a strip mall.
Reminds me of a joke I heard in New England: Some surveyors were out verifying the state line between New Hampshire and Maine. They found that, due to a mapping error, an old timer who had always considered himself a New Hampshirite was in fact a Down Easter. When told of this, the old timer replied, “Don’t want to live in Maine. Too cold.”
Nitpick: It’s spelled “cemetery,” with three "e"s. Thanks.
So what are they like? Table and chairs? Homey atmosphere?