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Six Historic Cemeteries in New England

As Halloween approaches, we thought it appropriate to look at some of the most historic cemeteries in New England.

Cemeteries are almost by definition historic, because they reflect the history of the deceased within their grounds.

We tried to pick a cross-section of graveyards, choosing some well-known to New Englanders and others that remain obscure. We chose six, one in each New England state.

Grove Street Cemetery

The Grove Street Cemetery has one of the most imposing gateways of all New England’s historic cemeteries.

The Yale University campus surrounds the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, and many Elis found their last home there. Such notables as Noah Webster, Eli Whitney, Walter Camp and Roger Sherman await their judgment under the turf of the historic cemetery.

Grove Street Cemetery started as the first nonprofit, private cemetery in the world in 1796. Previously, New Haven buried its dead on the New Haven Green. But the Green got too crowded during the yellow fever epidemic of 1794-95. So prominent New Haven families established the burial ground on farmland on the town’s border, just north of Grove Street. The first burial, of Martha Townsend, took place on Nov. 9, 1797.

It was an immediate hit, if that can be said of a cemetery.

The two men who designed the remarkable Egyptian Revival gateway — sculptor Hezekiah Augur and architect Henry Austin — are buried in the Grove Street Cemetery. The inscription on the stone gate reads, “The Dead Shall Be Raised.” A Yale president supposedly said, “They certainly will be, if Yale needs the property.”

Today, the 18-acre Grove Street Cemetery at provides a dignified resting place for many of New Haven’s elite as well as the indigent.

227 Grove St., New Haven, Conn.

Mount Hope Cemetery

Mount Hope in Bangor (above) and Mount Auburn in Massachusetts are two historic cemeteries that always doubled as tranquil parks.

Though Mount Auburn Cemetery in Greater Boston was the first cemetery designed as a park, Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor came a close second. Architect Charles Bryant designed it three years after Mount Auburn opened in 1831. The Bangor Horticultural Society formed to build the cemetery as a place where the dead and the living could contemplate nature peacefully.

Nearly 30,000 people re buried on its 264 acres, including Abe Lincoln’s Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and Public Enemy No. 1, Al Brady, shot to death on a Bangor street.

Two scenes from Stephen King’s Pet Sematary were filmed at Mount Hope. For one shot, the crew had to wait until 2 am to get the perfect moonlight.

The Bangor Historical Society offers a 90-minute tour of the cemetery on evenings before Halloween. They call it “The Darker Side of Mount Hope Cemetery: A visit to the graves of Bangorians who left this world before their time or under mysterious circumstances.” Click here for more information.

1048 State St., Bangor, Maine

Myles Standish Burying Ground

The gravesite of Myles Standish makes this burying ground one of Massachusetts’ most historic cemeteries.

Massachusetts makes it hard to choose among its historic cemeteries. The commonwealth has the old Granary Burying Ground and Mount Auburn, for starters. We looked for a cemetery for the victims of the Salem witch trials, but part of their punishment was to be buried in unmarked, unsanctified graves.

In the end, we couldn’t resist including the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, Mass. Several Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower rest in the cemetery with the captain. John Alden, Priscilla Alden and George Soule repose in what is said to be the oldest maintained cemetery in the United States.

Originally, the cemetery belonged to Duxbury’s first meeting house. When a new meeting house replaced the old, three-quarters of a mile down the road, the Myles Standish Burial Ground fell into disuse. But in 1887, the Duxbury Rural Society went about reclaiming the burying ground and has maintained it as a historic site ever since.

Four years after the Duxbury Rural Society took charge, a small team exhumed the body of an elderly male. They identified him as Myles Standish, along with his daughter Lora, his daughter-in-law and one of his sons who died young. Myles Standish was reburied in a pine box and a memorial erected above his grave.

However, Myles Standish’s descendants didn’t like that. So in 1931 they had their ancestor re-exhumed and re-buried in a copper box, then placed in a cement vault beneath the marker. The previous year, the descendants of John and Priscilla Alden placed slate markers near the spot believed to be their final resting place.

Chestnut Street, Duxbury, Mass.

North Cemetery

Old North, one of the most overlooked historic cemeteries in New England.

Many residents of the historic city of Portsmouth, N.H., don’t even know about the famous people buried in tiny old North Cemetery.

The 1.5 acres of North Cemetery sitting on the banks of North Mill Pond get far less attention than some of the other historic cemeteries in New England. It has, however, a number of notable residents, including William Whipple, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Gov. John Langdon, signer of the U.S. Constitution.

Also buried in old North: Prince Whipple, who, according to legend, accompanied George Washington in his crossing of the Delaware. The cemetery also includes Portsmouth’s first known Catholic and Jewish residents, as well as Thomas L. Thompson. Thompson commanded the Raleigh, the first U.S. navy warship built at what is now the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (and depicted on the seal of the State of New Hampshire). Hall Jackson, a local doctor who attended the wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill, also rests in peace at North Cemetery.

Maplewood Avenue, Portsmouth, N.H.

Newman Cemetery

This East Providence graveyard, one of Rhode Island’s most historic cemeteries.

There are probably more 17th-century grave markers in Newman Cemetery than in any other of Rhode Island’s historic cemeteries.

Newman Cemetery provides an encyclopedic history of style and fashion in funerary art. Part of Newman Congregational Church, it includes a remarkable number of 17th century gravestones.

The crude oldest stones often show only the deceased’s initials and year of death. Some, though, have decorative carvings.

The slate 18th-century markers include upright headstones with death heads and cherub heads. There are also portrait busts of the deceased and flat slabs decorated with coats-of-arms. Later markers include marble obelisks and slate stones with willow-and-urn motifs.

The 10.5-acre cemetery belongs to the Newman Congregational Church.

Corner of Newman St. and Pawtucket St. across from the Newman Congregational Church, 100 Newman Ave., Rumford, R.I.

Hope Cemetery

A grave marker modeled on Michelangelo’s Pieta in Hope Cemetery, one of Vermont’s most historic cemeteries.

Most of the people buried in Hope Cemetery carved their own memorials and tombstones. They were stonecutters who worked in the granite quarries of Barre, Vt., which calls itself the granite capital of the world.

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, skilled stonecutters flocked to Barre from Europe. Many brought their radical political views with them, dividing into socialists and anarchists.

The outdoor gallery of granite artistry attracts tourists with its beautifully carved and sometimes unusual granite memorials. They include a soldier smoking a cigarette, a race car, a bored angel, a soccer ball and an 18-wheel truck.

One master stonecutter, Louis Brusa, discovered he had silicosis and commissioned a memorial of himself dying in the arms of a woman. It caused a local scandal because the woman looked like his mistress rather than his wife.

The 65-acre cemetery has more than 10,000 tombstones and memorials, all made from Barre Grey granite.

6 North Main St., Barre, Vt.

Images of historic cemeteries: Mount Hope Cemetery, Bangor, By Svetlana Miljkovic – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8042714. Myles Standish grave, By Swampyank me – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9030067. Old North Cemetery, By John Phelan – Own work, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15202464.; Mount Hope Cemetery By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7614869. Newman Cemetery, By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21551196. Newman Congregational Church, By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21551148.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Epitaphs Tell More Tales in New England’s Graveyards

The epitaphs in New England’s graveyards tell many tales. Carved into the chiseled stone are stories of people who lived long rich lives and babies who breathed only hours; lives tragically cut short by accident or misfortune and lives that grew weary.

Old Town Burying Ground, Sandwich, Mass.

Such a one was Roswell Stowell who died Dec. 2, 1875, age 60, in Chesterfield, N.H. His epitaph reads,

Let no one stand behind my grave,
Now that I am called to rest,
Nor shed a tear that I am gone,
For what I need is rest.

Rest from the weary load of care,
Rest from the wearing pain:
For Death shall ever be to me
An everlasting gain.

I know the road was bright and fair
Or once it seemed to be.
But it has changed so much of late,
It has few charms for me.

Soon Rotten

Mary Fowler probably wouldn’t have appreciated her epitaph upon her death at age 24 in Milford, Conn.

Molly tho’ pleasant in her day
Was suddenly seized and went away
How soon she’s ripe, how soon she’s rotten
Laid in her grave and soon forgotten.

Capt. E. Griffin, 1767, Madison, Conn., lies under this verse on his tombstone:

The Boreas’ blasts and Boistrous waves
Have tost me too and fro
In spite of both, by God’s decree
I harbor here below.

While I do now At Anchor ride
With many of our Fleet
Yet once again I must set Sail
My Admiral Christ to meet.

Another ship captain, Augustus N. Littlefield, who died at 75 in 1878 in Newport, R.I., had something else to boast about. His tombstone reads,

An experienced and careful master
Mariner who never made a call upon
Underwriters for any loss.

Ephraim Wales Bull, who developed the Concord grape, received no rewards for his effort — something his epitaph reflects:

Ephraim Wales Bull
The originator of the Concord Grape
Born in Boston March 4, 1806
Died in Concord September 26, 1895
He sowed, others reaped.

One epitaph in a Boston burying ground recounts the patriotic career of a Son of Liberty:

Here lies buried in a
Stone Grave 10 feet deep
Capt Daniel Malcom Mercht
Who departed this Life
October 23d 1769
Aged 44 Years.

A true son of Liberty
A Friend to the Publick
An Enemy to oppression
And one of the foremost
In opposing the Revenue Acts
On America

Editorializing

This epitaph is an artifact of the baby boom that populated the colonies:

Litchfield, Conn.
Here lies the body of Mrs. Mary wife
Of Dea. John Buel Esq. She died
Nov. 4 1768 AEtat. 90
Having had 13 children
101 grand-children
274 great-grand-children
49 great-great-grand-children
410 Total. 336 survived her.

And in Duxbury, Mass, a gravestone reads:

Asenath
Widow of
Simeon Soule
Died
Feb. 25, 1865
Aged
87 years, 11 mo.
19 days.

The Chisel can’t help her any.

Score-settling epitaphs were not uncommon. In Boston, one gravestone reads:

Here lies ye body of
Mrs. Ammey Hunt wife of
Mr. Benjamin Hunt
Who died Nov. 26, 1769
Aged 40 years.

A sister of Sarah Lucas lieth here,
Whom I did love most Dear,
And now her Soul hath took its Flight
And bid her Spightful Foes good Night.

Childrens’ Epitaphs

The many, many infants who died young sometimes inspired whimsical commentary:

Ezra Thayer Jackson died after 25 days in Plymouth, Mass., in 1783.
What did the Little hasty sojourner
Find so forbidding & disgustful in
Our upper World to occasion its
Precipitant exit.

In Manchester, Vt., a stone marked the grave of three children who died in 1821, 1823 and 1824:

Here in the dust 3 babes we
Sleep by our Father here
our Mother Brothers
Sisters dear have left us
alone to moulder here.

This epitaph was reported in Lincoln, Maine:

Sacred to the Memory of Mr
Jared Bates who Died Aug. the 6^th
His Widow aged 24 who mourns
as one who can be comforted lives
at 7 Elm street this village
and possesses every qualification for a good wife.

Before the American Revolution, epitaphs modeled after the medieval Edward the Black Prince’s were common. They said, essentially, “I may be dead, but you will be too.”

One such example is the tombstone of Daniel Noyes, who died in Newbury, Mass., on March 15, 1716 at the age of 42:

As you were, so was I
God did call and I did dy
Now Children all whos name is Noyes
Make Jesus Christ
Your only choyes.

Read more old New England epitaphs here.

With thanks to Over Their Dead Bodies, Yankee Epitaphs & History, by Thomas C. Mann & Janet Greene. This story was updated in 2022.

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Seven Strange Facts About Colonial Funerals

New England’s early colonists paid a great deal of attention to death and funerals. Many people attended colonial funerals, and would think it strange for a town’s resident not to pay respect to an upstanding citizen by attending a funeral.

Customs at colonial funerals were quite different from today.

Many of today’s traditions, such as giving right of way to a funeral procession, stem from the earliest days of America. Other traditions from colonial funerals have died out or changed over time.

Here are seven strange practices of colonial funerals that faded away:

2 sets of pall bearers, sometimes 3

Early colonists carried the body of the deceased all the way from the funeral service to the graveyard. The older, more respected members of the community often found that a long way to carry a heavy coffin.

So two sets of men got pallbearer duty. The younger men of the community would be assigned as under bearers to carry the bier on which the coffin rested. Older men would carry the pall, which draped the casket. In cases where the graveyard was a long way off, a second set of under bearers spelled the first group.

Occasionally, the men set down the bier on a slab to rest.

Gloves, Routine Parts of Colonial Funerals

Families sent mourning gloves to people expected to attend the funeral of a departed loved one. Mourners wore the gloves during the funeral and at the graveside.

They were fashionable, respectful and, for ministers at least, plentiful. Andrew Eliot, ordained pastor of Boston’s North Church in 1742, kept a careful diary of his life. In his 32 years as a minister, he received 2,940 pairs of funeral gloves.

What did he do with them? He sold them, at least as many as he could. His diary shows a steady effort to divest himself of the gloves over the years.

Old North Church

Rings Were the Thing

The families of the deceased often created commemorative rings for their loved ones. They would be distributed to families, close friends and ministers. The rings represented a steady stream of business for goldsmiths and silversmiths.

The rings frequently had inscriptions with sayings, such as: ‘Death Parts United Hearts,’ or ‘Death Conquers All’ or ‘Prepare for Death.’ Because of the expense, mourning rings were more common at the colonial funerals of the wealthy.

The minister Andrew Eliot, in addition to collecting gloves, also had a massive ring collection. He stored it in a tankard.

Families often cherished the rings and handed them down from one generation to the next. The colonists didn’t view them as maudlin, but rather cheerful reminders of their reunion with their dead family in the afterlife.

No Sermons

While many townspeople attended colonial funerals, the services were virtually silent affairs. The earliest colonists, wishing to avoid any appearance of papistry, conducted minimalist funerals that no one could confuse with the Catholic ceremonies.

Sermons and eulogies were non-existent. Instead, the pallbearers would silently conduct the body to the graveyard. Mourners attached notes of praise for the deceased to the bier, which would be compiled and published as memorials to the deceased.

Bostonian Thomas Lechford (1590-1644) offered a description of colonial funerals in his notebooks:

At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most commonly present.

At funerals for major civic leaders, a minister would say a few words at the grave about the man’s character. For the most part, however, interment was a silent affair. This custom began dying out in the early 1700s, however. Popular sentiment began to build behind the idea that the dearly departed should have a few well-chosen words said over his grave.

Sober Affairs, Funerals Were Not

Early New Englanders used colonial funerals as a great excuse to tie one on.

Lucius Manlius Sargent, in his collection Dealings with the Dead, noted that in early colonial funerals guests viewed the body and then proceeded to a nearby table – always provided. They could then choose liquor from a well-stocked bar.

Mourners then generally went outside and to chat until it was time to carry the coffin to the burial ground. Though rarely did colonial funerals cause drunkenness, the idea of not serving liquor would have shocked. And the bar tab could grow quite large.

The following listing represents the funeral expenses for David Porter of Hartford, who drowned in 1678. The biggest outlay: booze.

A pint of liquor for those who dived for him. – 1 shilling
A quart of liquor for those who brought him home. – 2 shillings
Two quarts of wine & 1 gallon of cider to jury of inquest. — 5 shillings
8 gallons & 3 quarts wine for funeral. – £1, 15 shillings
Barrel cider for funeral. –16 shillings
1 Coffin. –12 shillings
Winding sheet. — 18 shillings

Sargent noted the practice of serving alcohol at funerals finally petered out, saddening a great many of the older citizens.

Mourning Got Out of Hand

As the colony grew wealthier, more and more mourners received rings, scarves and gloves. The wealth or popularity of the deceased was highlighted by the number of gifts distributed or the length of the funeral bell ringing.

The showiness and expense offended Puritan leaders, and several efforts limited the practices. In 1741, the Massachusetts government decided to fine a person 50 pounds for distributing wine or rum or funeral rings. The colony also restricted gloves to pall bearers and the clergy.

In Salem, the government hoped to curb excessive bell ringing and grandiose funerals by limiting what undertakers could charge for bell-ringing. Officials also limited the number of times a bell could be rung, as well as the overall cost of organizing the funeral.

Objects, Even Houses, Were Draped

People didn’t only decorate themselves colonial funerals. In some places, they decorated objects with black crape.

In Hartford, black cloth covered all wall decorations, mirrors and pictures. Mourners closed window shutters and sometimes tied them together with black ribbon or a sash. They kept it that way for a year-long mourning period.

Following the death of Sir William Pepperell of Kittery, mourners draped his entire house.

Again, the prominence of the deceased generally dictated the size of the colonial funeral show and the quantity of black bunting used.

If you enjoyed reading this story, you may also want to read about epitaphs in New England graveyards here.

Hat tip to Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle. This story about colonial funerals was updated in 2021.

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Epitaphs Tell Tales in New England’s Graveyards

Inscribed in stone in hundreds of old New England graveyards are the sometimes sad, sometimes funny epitaphs describing how people lived and how they died.

The moss- and lichen-covered stones tell tales of shipwrecked sailors, elderly ministers, smallpox victims, women who died in childbirth and children who died in infancy.

Old Town Burying Ground, Sandwich, Mass.

Mariners’ Epitaphs

In East Hampton, Conn., an epitaph tells the story of an 87-year-old seaman who died in 1883.

Landsmen or sailors
For a moment avast,
Poor Jack’s main topsail
Is laid to the mast,

The worms gnaw his timbers,
His vessel a wreck,
When the last whistle sounds
He’ll be up on deck.

A Cape Cod fisherman was remembered with a similar wit:

Capt. Thomas Coffin
Born Jan. 7, 1792 Died Jan. 10, 1842
He has finished catching cod,
And gone to meet his God.

Epitaphs That Say How They Died

Some epitaphs focused on the manner of death, such as this on a tombstone in Kittery, Maine:

I was drowned, alas! In the deep, deep seases.
The blessed Lord does as he pleases.
But my Kittery friends did soon appear,
And laid my body right down here.

Rev. Bunker Day of Hinsdale, N.H., wrote an epitaph for Jonathan Tute, who died from smallpox despite his inoculation from the disease.

Here lies cut down, like unripe fruit,
A son of Mr. Amos Tute.

To death he fell a helpless prey,
On April V and Twentieth Day,
In seventeen Hundred Seventy-Seven
Quitting this world, we hope, for heaven.

Behold the amazing alteration,
Effected by inoculation;
The means empowered his life to save,
Hurried him headlong to the grave.

Gravestone of josiah Leavitt

Mrs. Elizabeth Swain must have inspired great respect in life. When she died at 52 on Oct. 7, 1810, a stonecutter chiseled a long remembrance on her tombstone.

In all the endearing relations of
Life, Her conduct was stamp’d with the
Majesty of moral principal which
Commands respect, and with the beauty
Of propriety conciliates esteem
Through her last long and painful
Sickness she evinced the Christian and
With a firm hope in the redemption
She calmly bade the world farewell.

Many infants rest in peace in the old New England graveyards. Typical of the epitaphs for children is this one for 6-month-old Bezaleel Shaw in Old North Cemetery on Nantucket:

My life in infant Days was Spent
While to my parents I was lent
One smiling Look to them I gave
And then descended to the grave.

Indictment

The brother of a dead man in Pelham, Mass., brought charges against his widow – on his gravestone:

Warren Gibbs,
Died by arsenic poison
March 23, 1860 Aged 36 years
5 months and 23 days
Think my friends when this you see
How my wife has dealt by me
She in some oysters did prepare
Some poison for my lot and share
Then of the same I did partake
And nature yielded to its fate
Before she my wife became
Mary Felton was her name.

Erected by his brother
Wm Gibbs

William Gibbs never brought legal charges against Mary Felton Gibbs. Nor did anyone else.

The Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven. .

A Connecticut man’s children had this epitaph carved on their father’s gravestone:

Our father lies beneath the sod,
His spirit’s gone unto his God;
We never more shall hear his tread,
Nor see the wen upon his head.

If your last name was Pease, your epitaph might have been similar to the one for Ezekiel Pease, found in a Nantucket cemetery:

Pease is not here,
Only his pod
He shelled out his Peas
And went to his God

Edwin Valentine Mitchell tells us the following well-known New England epitaphs may be apocryphal:

Here lies the body of Saphronia Proctor,
Who had a cold, but wouldn’t doctor.
She couldn’t stay, she had to go,
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

And then this one:

Beneath this little mound of clay
Lies Captain Ephraim Daniels,
Who chose the dangerous month of May
To change his winter flannels.

A Reader Writes

Nathaniel King of Middleton, Mass., wrote that he and his sister rediscovered an old, forgotten graveyard in their town. Her Girl Scout troop later cleaned it up.

“In it there was a really great epitaph,” he wrote.

As you are now, So once was I
Rejoicing in my bloom;
As I am now, you too will lie;
Dissolving in your tomb.

Read more entertaining epitaphs here.

With thanks to It’s an Old New England Custom by Edwin Valentine Mitchell. This story about New England epitaphs was updated in 2022.

Images: Josiah Leavitt gravestone by By dee E. Warenycia, Roseville, CA – via email from author, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5636493.

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