Facilities

Barefoot Cemetery aka The Putney Yard

This yard is generally known as Barefoot Corner cemetery, and is in school district No. 10. The original owner of the land was Jonathan Putney, who gave the right of burial to his several neighbors, using it also for his own family. Mr. Putney died in 1814; the estate was then divided, the homestead falling to Mrs. Jacob Miller, who a few years after the death of Mr. Miller (1817) married George West. The Putneys, the Millers, the Wests and Searles are buried here, and are in one way and another relations of each other. The oldest marked grave is 1807. There are nearly on hundred graves yet only about fifty of them have headstones.

The Miller and West families have erected a fine monument here which will be for a memorial of their families. In this yard there was, a half century ago, erected a tomb by three families who resided in that vicinity. The owners of this tomb were Elijah and Elnathan McIntire (cousins), and Nathaniel Brown. Their families were placed in it until some over twenty bodies were within the tomb, when the descendants of Elnathan McIntire took the remains of their relatives out and buried them near by. The others still remain, and without a doubt will soon be buried and the tomb which for a long time has been in a decaying state will be taken down and the placed leveled away.

In 1835 Mrs. George West, a daughter of Mr. Putney, the original owner, gave a deed of this lot of 116 rods of land to the town, with the right of way from it to the highway. Jonathan Putney was in the revolutionary war and came into this town on its close, from Salem. Nathaniel Burden, whose body was buried in the tomb, was also in the revolutionary war, and drew a pension from the government in his age. He died in 1849 at the extreme age of 97.

Source: This text is an excerpt from a compilation of Charlton Cemeteries by Reverend Anson Titus.