Mineral Spring Cemetery, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

I have many ancestors buried in this cemetery but somehow I had never visited it on my other trips back to Rhode Island. I think I have always  been side-tracked by Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls, and Oak Grove Cemetery in Pawtucket. Since my Dad's family has been in this part of Rhode Island forever, I have many family burials in all these cemeteries. And from reading the area censuses line by line looking for family members (back before the censuses were all indexed and on-line), I recognize so many of the names on the non-family graves!

Mineral Spring Cemetery is not in the best of shape, especially compared to nearby Oak Grove and Moshassuck Cemeteries. Many of the gravestones have been toppled, and over the years, a lot of them have become buried.

When I first visited this cemetery a few days ago, I ran into Ken Postle, a volunteer who has received a grant to hire neighborhood teens to unearth and reset some of these tombstones. I think he said he has the teens for a total of 1000 man-hours. It looked like the group was doing great work and have located many buried stones, and have started re-setting them. Great job, Ken! and kudos to you for organizing this effort!

Re-set Gravestones at Mineral Spring Cemetery

Both Moshassuck Cemetery and Mineral Spring Cemetery have a special section of the graveyard dedicated to the Rhode Island men who served in the Civil War. Both cemeteries have Civil War gravestones in other parts of the cemetery as well.

Civil War Memorial at Mineral Spring Cemetery

Unfortunately, most of the Civil War grave markers are buried too deeply in the ground to read the inscriptions.

I started taking pictures in the back left corner of the cemetery for www.BillionGraves.com (I will also post the pictures on www.findagrave.com ) but had to stop when a sudden rainstorm started. I only got about 20 photos taken, but one of them was of Zophar Skinner's gravestone. This Zophar was my g-g-g-grandfather. His son, Zophar, was the Zophar this blog was named for - I had previously photographed his grave at Moshassuck Cemetery.