Adjacent to Saint Denis Cemetery on West Riverside Avenue.
The earliest known burial date was 1842 and the latest 1936. It is adjacent to Saint Denis Catholic Cemetery on West Riverside Avenue, Fort Fairfield, Maine and many people erroneously believe it to be a part of St. Denis cemetery. In its earliest days, it was known as the Protestant Cemetery, Houghton Burial Ground, Houghton Cemetery, Riverside Cemetery, and Old Riverside Cemetery (after the new Riverside Cemetery was built in 1883). The parcel of land on which the cemetery is located was sold by William Houghton to Riverside Cemetery Corporation in 1881. There are veterans buried there from the Civil War, Spanish American War, and World War I, and at least one veteran of the British Army. By 1910, there were five Civil War veterans buried there and more followed. An 1894 newspaper article suggests that the Catholic Church bought a portion of the cemetery for the current day Saint Denis Cemetery. In 1916, the local undertaker, Kimball Haycock, was collecting money to build a fence around the Houghton Burial Ground and the Catholic Church was to pay one-half the expense of the fence between the two cemeteries. In 1914, a newspaper article described the neglected state of Houghton Burial Ground as "mostly grown up to bushes, largely evergreens, it being hard to find what few gravestones there are, many of them having already fallen down". As the years went on, farmers encroached on one end of the cemetery and it was plowed up and planted to potatoes. Some of the bodies were moved to the new Riverside Cemetery after 1883. (text by L. Shaw)



Identified by the Maine Old Cemetery Association (MOCA) as the Original Riverside Cemetery [ARFFLD02] with directions as "directly north of the St. Denis Catholic Cemetery on Riverside Avenue West, the first road to your left after crossing the bridge in Fort Fairfield. Some of the lots are fenced in, i.e. The Dean and Higgins lots are inside one fenced off plot. The Smith stone is in a fenced in area by itself. The rest of the stones are directly in back of the Smith and Dorsey area in weed and bushes." Each cemetery is identified with signage at the location.