WATSON YARD & QUIMBY GRAVESITES
LOCATIONS: Right off Mt. Road in Warner onto Quimby Road, on a mostly an unmaintained road in Salisbury, close to the Warner line, in what was referred to as the Watson District after the first European settlers
WATSON YARD: Off Quimby Rd, on a trail on the private property of David Connors.
Condition of the Watson Yard is overgrown and due to recent vandalism headstones were stolen. A footstone? dated 1863 and broken stones remain..
QUIMBY GRAVE SITES: Approx. 300 yards north of Watson Yard on Quimby Rd. Two Quimbys are buried there although there are no markers and no clear evidence of grave sites. Names of the Quimbys need research at this time.
Note: Because of recent vandalism to the Watson graveyard, the owner and also resident of the property, David Connors, requests that for the security of the graveyard and out of courtesy should you like to visit the graveyards please contact him.
Madeline Minard and Cemetery Committee member Jim Minard, at the entrance to Watson Graveyard
Exploring the rough terrain of the Watson Graveyard
The Watson Yard is on the Watson homestead and more research is needed to discover the connection between the Watsons, Trues and Straws buried there.
RE: Alma Wells: Abijah’s son was Daniel Watson m Sarah Palmer, they had a daughter named Miriam F. b dec 26 1808 m Dec 1832 to Benjamin Wells of Sutton. Miriam died in Minn. Nov 28 1873. Alma Wells is possibly Daniel’s and Sarah’s grand daughter.
RE: According to John Dearborn’s, The History of Salisbury Caleb Watson was a member and Deacon of the Free Will Baptist Church, part of the Great Awakening Movement of that day.
RE: Mrs. Sarah Watson, nee Sarah Quimby, was likely born about 1759 Weare NH, married 1780 in Weare NH and died Jan 25, 1830.
Just prior to July 4, 2011, Jim Minard, of the Salisbury Cemetery committee, visited the Watson Graveyard and made an educated guess as to the location of the Caleb Watson grave based on the Salisbury Cemetery Records. Evidence to date suggests Caleb was a soldier in the Revolutionary War serving with Robert Rogers and deserving of a Flag, which was placed. David Connors provided a tour of the area and showed Jim, Madeleine Minard and Rose Cravens the evidence of the once thriving Watson and Quimby farm settlement and The Salisbury Mountain Schoolhouse #10. Evidence of past extensive grazing areas with rock walls abound.
The square footage of the cemetery is quite large for the only 10 grave sites listed in the Salisbury Cemetery book and listings do not include the dates on the stone fragments found. Mr. Connors recollects that a victim of the Tornado of 1821 was buried in the Watson graveyard with the last name of True. A youngster of about 11 or 12 with that last name is on record as having died as result of injuries in that event and perhaps it is he who is buried here.
Quimby Road (the most western section of the old South Range Road) was once a direct way for settlers to get from the Watson District on the side of Mt. Kearsarge down to the Smith’s Corner area, the once vibrant little community, in what is now the Federal Flood Plain where only grazing land remains. Quimby Road access is now from the Warner side.
Many thanks to David Connors. It would have been very easy to miss these sites without his guidance as the area is very well forested again.
The list is a compilation of data from the study of tombstones by Priscilla Hammond in 1933 at The Watson Graveyard off Quimby road, near Mt. Keararge.