Village Burial Ground
Long before Hillside Cemetery became the final resting place for generations of Holley residents, the village’s earliest settlers were buried in two small graveyards now lost to time. The story of these early cemeteries—one erased by the coming of the railroad, the other quietly abandoned—offers a glimpse into the early history of Holley and the growth that transformed it.
According to the Historical Album of Orleans County, New York (Sanford & Co., 1879), the first burial ground in Holley was located on “a short ridge or knoll, elevated twelve or fifteen feet, and located in the southern part of the village, a short distance northeast of the present depot.” This small, elevated hill once held the earliest graves in the community. However, when the railroad came through Holley, progress reshaped the land—literally. The Historical Album records that “upon construction of the railroad bed through Holley, the remains were removed, and the entire hill taken away to help form the embankment over Sandy Creek.” With the railroad’s arrival, the village’s first cemetery was completely obliterated.
The community then established a second burial ground, situated on the west side of the Clarendon road (now Route 237) near the town’s southern boundary. On June 15, 1844, William Hatch and his wife sold a parcel of 1.07 acres to a group of trustees representing the First Presbyterian Society of Murray—Silas Day, Lewis K. Churchill, Alva Morgan, Moses N. Stoddard, George W. Dutcher, and Justin Day—for use as a cemetery. This ground, later known simply as the “Old Cemetery,” served the residents of Holley for several decades.
By the time the Historical Album was published in 1879, the site was described as “still occupied as a cemetery, but no new graves had been made there since 1867.” In the years that followed, the remaining burials were carefully relocated to Hillside Cemetery, the village’s present burial ground.
Today, no visible trace remains of Holley’s first or second cemeteries. Yet their memory endures in the written record—a reminder of the village’s earliest generations and how the march of progress, from railroads to redevelopment, reshaped both the landscape and the way Holley’s history was remembered.
