West Hollow Cemetery: A Brief History

(Clement Road & County Road 33)

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January 2025

Compiled by Kenton Poole

West Hollow Cemetery started out as a local cemetery for families that had settled in this area as Naples proper no longer had readably available farmland. Indeed there were so many Suttons living here on the 1850 map it’s called the Sutton Settlement. The original 18 Naples families had settled all the better farm land near the village and that forced those who arrived in the early 1800s to move west, north and south.

I believe the first burials were about 1800 as they were marked by fieldstones. At that time in Naples there wasn’t a source for sandstone monuments and marble didn’t make its appearance for 25 more years. Many were interned here using common flat field stones up until 1825 and even later depending on family resources. No one had tools in 1800 to inscribe stones so they went unmarked. All cemetery records were lost in a village fire in 1890. There are approximately 25 unidentified field stones within the cemetery. There are 64 engraved stones. There is essentially an unknown cemetery within the known cemetery.

West Hollow Cemetery, located at Clement Road & County Road 33 contains burials dated from 1800-1943. (Photo by Kenton Poole)

The first engraved stone was Onsimous Covel also from Connecticut who married Hannah Allen. He died young in 1823. His wife moved west and Onsimous is buried adjacent to his father in law Horace Allen. Onsimous had a many siblings who also settled the area and they are buried in Rose Ridge Cemetery. Sewell and Julia Cleaveland owned the land the cemetery was located on. In that barn, in reasonable weather, one of the Cleaveland daughters started a school. Many of the Cleavelands children are buried here. His son Alexander and his family are buried just outside the lines of the cemetery’s on the original family property. The Cleveland’s weren’t the first to be buried here. According to Freedom Parish in a Naples Record article he is quoted as saying the first was a young black girl from the area. I believe her unmarked sandstone is the large one still standing at the foot of cemetery near Clement Road. Sewell and Julia Cleaveland are reportedly buried in a raised square bed that was once marked by a maple tree. Their actual gravesite is unmarked with a stone. The entire site is less than one quarter acre and adjoins the corner plot that overtime has served as School House #6, a town hall and church. Today it is, as it has been since the School District sold to John Richards of Rochester in 1939 for $175 when Naples School District centralized as a private residence.

The Cemetery is loosely organized by family, with each family sharing a plot. As families inter married this structure started falling apart. Some of the oldest names in Naples such as the Suttons, Clements, Cleavelands, Johnsons, Smiths, Covel, and Hatches are buried here. The cemetery also contains many unaccompanied children who died from the diseases of the time, were buried here and often their families moved on. When Rose Ridge Cemetery opened after the Civil War many families in Naples opted for its closer proximity and the burials tailed off. In fact it is said some were removed from West Hollow and reinterred in Rose Ridge. The last burial was Emma Diedrick Proper in 1942. Her husband Barney, a livestock farmer, who did some caretaking work at the cemetery, was buried there previously in 1923.

In the summer of 2024 Naples Historical Society members and former residents of Naples Ken Poole and David Bloom renovated the cemetery with the permission of the Naples Town Board.

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