The one-acre plot now known as Tolman Cemetery [Find A Grave ID 90620] was deeded to the town of Thomaston by Isaiah Tolman, Sr., in 1783. [Tolman to Town of Thomaston, Lincoln County Deeds, Book 16, p. 222.] In 1810 the town paid Jacob Ulmer $50 to build a "good stone wall and gate" at the cemetery. [Eaton, Cyrus, History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, vol. 1, Masters, Smith & Co., Printers, Hallowell, 1865, p. 167.] Tolman Cemetery is now part of the City of Rockland.

The first burials in Tolman marked by gravestones were in 1788. Most burials occurred before 1860 with only twenty-one burials occurring after 1860. There are 187 gravestones in the cemetery representing some 200 burials. There are twenty-four veterans and patriots of the Revolutionary War and sixteen veterans of the War of 1812 buried in Tolman Cemetery.

The repair & resetting of gravestones was undertaken in 2017 under the guidance of Joseph Ferrannini of Grave Stone Matters, Hoosic Falls, NY. The cemetery was mapped. All stones were photographed before and after repairs. Transcriptions of all engraving on all the stones were recorded and are available on the members' web page of the Maine Old Cemetery Association and in the book noted below.

In 2017 Tolman Cemetery was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in acknowledgment of the iconography on its earliest gravestones. In 2024 a book about Tolman Cemetery and the patriots and veterans buried there was published by Maine Authors Publishing, Thomaston, Maine: Fighting for Freedom, Fighting for Survival.

-Helen A. Shaw, CG