Veterans of the American Revolution are buried in all but one of Agawam’s six historic cemeteries. Of the four town-maintained cemeteries, the Old North Burying Ground, located on Cooper Street, is the oldest, being the second cemetery established (1732) west of the Connecticut River.
In 1917, the Springfield Republican newspaper reported: “It is stated that, so far as known, more soldiers who became officers were enlisted from Agawam than from any other town of its size in the state.”
That same article listed the burials of these Revolutionary soldiers in the Old North Burying Ground: Thaddeus Bowe; Enoch Cooper; Timothy Horton; John Lanckton; Abner Leonard; Aribet Leonard; Benjamin Leonard; (a second) Benjamin Leonard; Fellows Leonard; Moses Leonard; Preserved Leonard; Thaddeus Leonard; and Nathan Rowley. Additional veterans of the Revolution buried there include Joseph Colton, Hezekiah Warriner Sr., and possibly, David White.
The following information was compiled from research conducted for the Agawam Historical Commission by Shannon Walsh and Derek Strahan of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission:
Dr. Timothy Horton was a surgeon who was listed as having been part of Lt. Col. Timothy Robinson’s regiment at Ticonderoga in 1777.
The highest-ranking Veteran of the American Revolution with a known marker in the Old North Burying Ground is Lt. Col. Nathan Rowley. Rowley was commissioned as a captain in Col. John Mosely’s regiment in April 1776 and subsequently saw service in Mosely’s regiment during the Saratoga campaign in the summer of 1777. In 1782, near the end of the war, he was commissioned as a lt. col. under Mosley’s command.
Other Revolutionary War-era officers with markers here include Capt. Preserved Leonard, commissioned as a captain in Col. John Mosley’s regiment in April 1776, and who later in the year served in Lt. Col. Timothy Robinson’s regiment at Saratoga. In 1779, he served as a captain in Col. Elisha Porter’s regiment at New London.
Another officer was Lt. Enoch Cooper, who was commissioned in 1776 as a first lieutenant in Nathan Rowley’s company, and who later held the same rank in Col. David Leonard’s regiment during the Saratoga campaign in 1777, and in Preserved Leonard’s company at New London in 1779.
Several enlisted men buried here include Abner Leonard, a private in Enoch Cooper’s company at Ticonderoga, and Aribert Leonard and Hezekiah Warriner who both served as privates in Nathan Rowley’s company during the Saratoga campaign in the fall of 1777.
One of the Benjamin Leonards was a drummer; Thaddeus Leonard was a fifer.
The work of the following “probable” stone carvers in the cemetery: Edmund Bartlett; Nathaniel Phelps; Joseph Johnson; Joseph Williston; Elijah Burt; Jonathan Burt; Ezra Stebbins; William Stebbins; Solomon Brewer; John Ely Sr.; and John Ely Jr. has also been identified by Walsh and Strahan.
The last burial in the cemetery was in 1965.
