LYNDEBOROUGH – In 1854, several members of two families contracted smallpox. There was no doctor living in town, so they called on Dr. Lorenzo Bartlett of New Boston, who came immediately.

All of the patients eventually recovered, but Dr. Bartlett caught the disease and did not survive. He was 28 years old.

According to the town history of 1905, because of the fear of the disease, smallpox victims were not permitted burial in the town cemetery. Dr. Bartlett’s brother-in-law, Dr. Samuel Dearborn of Mont Vernon, purchased a small plot on the “road which leads over the mountain toward Francestown.”

The site, located beside what is now Crooked S Road, is neatly walled and cared for by the Cemetery Trustees. The Heritage Commission will add a historic marker this fall.

The Commission is also planning a marker for the West Cemetery, a small neighborhood burial ground on Route 31 north, near the junction with Gulf Road.

The information markers are part of an on-going Heritage Commission project which so far includes the Village Common, Lyndeborough Center, the Lyndeborough Glass Factory, Cristiana Woodward Monument on Center Road, and the Clark Pottery site on 2nd N.H. Turnpike.

Future sites will include the Soldier’s Monument in the South Cemetery plus several small cemeteries that are now closed.