| Cemetery Number | SK037 |
| Town | SOUTH KINGSTOWN |
| Cemetery Name | OAKDELL CEMETERY-PEACEDALE |
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| Graves List | Display Graves List |
| Location | OAKDELL ST |
| State | RI |
| Direction | N |
| Pole Number | 1925 |
| Distance | 20 |
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| Size in Feet | 400 |
| Size in Feet | 350 |
| Inscriptions | 1444 |
| Fieldstones | 12 |
| Tombs | |
| Exist? | YES |
| Last seen date? | 2003 |
| Newest | 1993 |
| Oldest | 1835 |
| Vandalism | Y |
| Veteran | 100 |
| Pole | F |
| Comment | Oakdell Cemetery is located twenty feet north of Oakdell Street at telephone pole # 1925. It contains about two thousand burials with 1,470 inscribed stones and twelve fieldstones.
James N. Arnold recorded this cemetery Mar. 4, 1880, his #56, mistakenly calling it Oak Grove Cemetery. His transcript includes 120 inscriptions for this cemetery in 1880. Charles and Martha Benns recorded part of this cemetery in 1937, their #854. From 1991-1993 Dr. Bill Eddleman, James Good, Craig Anthony, and John Sterling recorded 1,470 names from gravestones in this cemetery. When these data were compared to the James N. Arnold transcript of 1880 only ten stones recorded in 1880 could not be found. This success rate is surprising based on the large amount of vandalism in this cemetery—some of the worst in the state—in recent years. See The Narragansett Times of June 12, 1991 and Dec. 12, 1992 for two such incidents. In 1993 about one hundred stones were down and or broken. Of the ten missing stones from our recording, eight were children’s stones that are usually small and sometimes pulled out by maintenance people who mistake them for footstones.
The starting date for this cemetery was probably 1859 when there were six burials marked by gravestones and possibly others unmarked. The dates on gravestones in this cemetery range from 1835 to present. If one charts the 120 gravestones found there by Arnold in 1880, the few dates before 1859 indicates they were probably moved from other burying places to Oakdell Cemetery. Six small family cemeteries recorded in 1880 by James N. Arnold were found to now be located in Oakdell Cemetery. These have now been registered as historical cemetery numbers SK 166, SK 175, SK 176, SK 177, SK 186, and SK 191 (partial) to preserve who was buried in them originally. These cemeteries were moved either because the family bought a lot in Oakdell and wanted to remove the older graves in the old homestead cemetery to the new lot, or the cemetery had to be moved to make way for a road (e. g. Post Road) or a commercial building. |
| Condition | fair |
| Enclosure | granite posts |
| Gate | no gate |
| Growth | grass-well kept |
| Terrain | hilly moderate |
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