Cemeteries in Benton
Index to all Benton cemeteries. The three-letter codes shown in the table are used in the index to denote which burials are in each cemetery. In the index, the name from each gravestone is in regular type; the names of all others are in italics. The general index to all posted cemeteries in this project may be found here.
A NOTE ON BENTON SOURCES
Listed herein are all the known burials in the town of Benton, including those in two large and active association cemeteries, plus a number of smaller neighborhood burial grounds and family plots, twenty in all. All those that still contain burials were visited, most of them repeatedly. Every stone was read. The compilers feel that this is the best available list, and it is complete up to the date of reading. We also included a few cemeteries that are known once to have existed, but are now lost.
Many marble stones are now difficult to read because of acid weathering. Rubbings were done and a great deal of detective work undertaken to discover the correct reading. Some slate stones are now exfoliating, and where possible these were reassembled to obtain at least fragmentary readings.
All physical readings were then compared with available earlier readings. In this way a final list was compiled that - to the best of the compilers' ability and belief - collates, updates and corrects all known earlier lists.
The listings as given are in alphabetical order within each cemetery. The first column includes the name of the deceased person; the second the date of death; the third other pertienent information. Any information not actually read from the stone is enclosed in brackets. This information might include genealogical notes and dates gleaned from other sources, notes about the lot or monument, or notes about the condition of the stone. One point that perhaps should be made here is that where a lot or monument is identified by associating it with an individual's name, this has no necessary bearing on actual lot ownership.
Two points should be noted that particularly apply in the case of active cemeteries. First, the list is current only as of the date of reading. This project was begun in 1990, and no attempt was made to add dates from more recent burials. And there may very well be some markers listed here for burials which have not occurred.
Sources consulted for all Benton cemeteries were census records, early town and village vital records, early estate inventories copied for the Yates County Historian by the Ontario County Archives, published genealogical material in Stafford C. Cleveland's History and Directory of Yates County, NY (1873), and notes and records compiled by former County Historian Frank Swann (available for public use at the Yates County Genealogical & Historical Society in Penn Yan). Especially helpful in finding some of the smaller cemeteries away from the public highway was longtime town resident John Stine.
Earlier readings of some Benton cemeteries were done by the local chapter of the DAR beginning in the 1930s, and most especially by Catharine Aspell Spencer of Penn Yan in the late 1970s. In some cases readings or partial readings were made by others, and mention of these is included with the notes on individual cemeteries. The compilers believe they have exhausted all known materials relating to these twenty cemeteries, with exceptions as noted in the individual descriptions.
Of the listed cemeteries in Benton, two are owned and maintained by cemetery associations, one is maintained by the town, six are abandoned and unmaintained neighborhood cemeteries, four now contain no marked burials, and seven are family plots. One or two have been cleared or partially cleared within recent memory, but unless this effort is sustained it often leads to even worse conditions than before. There has been no formal attempt to repair broken stones or to reset fallen ones. This is an expensive proposition when done correctly, and is better left undone than done wrong. The compilers feel that in many cases they had the last possible chance to read certain stones.