Person Page - 122

An eccentric railroad engineer, William Eli Talbot, had taken the stones (from East Granby's Smallpox Cemetery) and built them into the foundation of his workshop. Talbot also added an eclectic mix of other stones.

. . . one headstone that came from a North Granby Cemetery was found on is former property.

This was the stone of Jabez Holcomb, born 29 Sept 1765 and died 20 July 1843, age 77. He was the son of Elijah and Violet (Cornish) Holcomb and the husband of Sophia (Godard). Jabez was buried in a small family cemetery located across from 200 Loomis Street in North Granby, "on a little eminence about a hundred feet west of the highway."

There were only five stones and probably seven burials in this little graveyard. Three generations of Holcombs were buried here. Jabez and his wife Sophia were the elders. Their unmarried son Almanzor, died in 1845, age 28, and Louisa Augusta, wife of another son, Lemuel, died in childbirth at the age of 30, in 1844. The youngest was the first to be buried in the cemetery. Little Martha Ann, infant daughter of Lemuel and Louisa, died in 1839, as spring was turning into summer. She was seven months and 25 days old.

Unfortunately, this cemetery has completely disappeared. When the Holcomb farm was sold, the new owners used the land for pasture and cows grazed amid the stones. Eventually the gravestones fell, were broken, and finally disappeared during the 1950's. Without the Hale Collection listing the gravestone inscriptions, there would be no record of the burials.

Ironically, the only stone to survive is the one that was removed (perhaps with permission of the land owners) by Mr. Talbot. Since the exact location of the Holcomb Cemetery is lost, the gravestone of Jabez Holcomb will be kept at the Salmon Brook Historical Society with an explanation of its history. ⁵