The OLDEST Burying Ground in Boston is the King's Chapel Burying Ground, which is just around the corner from the old Boston City Hall. Superlative, check!
King's Chapel is pretty much only open for tours, so I didn't get to go in, but did you know that it was Boston's FIRST Anglican church, founded in 1686? Inside, you will find the OLDEST American pulpit still in continuous use in this (now) Unitarian Universalist church. AND Paul Revere started a foundry after the Revolution, and his family made the largest bell that still rings here in 1816, just two years before he passed away. Paul Revere himself called this particular bell "the sweetest bell we ever made." His legacy lives on in the 25 bells that he made that still ring in various spots across the city.
It's like follow the yellow brick road, but just follow the red and gray bricks instead. This time, we are going to the King's Chapel Burying Ground, which is just behind the chapel itself. The King's Chapel Burying Ground is the OLDEST English burying ground in Boston.
One of the most "controversial" grave markers is that of Elizabeth Pain. Some say that Hester Prynne from the Scarlett Letter was modeled after Elizabeth since she had a child out of wedlock before she married Samuel Pain. The child actually died, and although Elizabeth was found not guilty of murder, she WAS found guilty of negligence and given 20 whippings! Nathanial Hawthorne even mentions the King's Chapel Burying Ground in the Scarlett Letter and some have interpreted the shield on the left of her headstone to contain the letter "A." In reality, headstones with shields usually just meant she had money and/or this was a coat of arms of her family heritage. Although the idea that Hawthorne modeled Hester after Elizabeth might be a stretch, he definitely was inspired by her headstone.
King's Chapel burying ground, much like the Granary Burying Ground is full of sad grave markers that have been worn down by time and the weather.
The church does not currently own or operate the King's Chapel Burying Ground, because it is currently the property of the City of Boston (and has been for a long time.) The church itself had once been a wooden framed building that was built in 1686 but about 30 years later, when the congregation size was too large for the small church, the "town" (or city as it now is) granted some of the burying ground land parcels to the church so it could expand. Of course, people freaked out because there were people buried in those parcels of land. They relocated the graves from the site of the church during the early to mid 1700s (after the church had to expand a second time) but it was much like the Granary Burying Ground in that they were haphazardly placed without any real organization. So in 1810, they moved the headstones (errr, but not the bodies) to line up in more orderly rows. So this is a pretty chaotic cemetery!
William Dawes is also POSSIBLY buried here. Although probably not! Dr. Joseph Warren sent both Paul Revere and William Dawes out on that fateful night to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British were coming, and both made it to their destination - the Hancock Clarke house in Lexington. Dawes arrived about 30 minutes after Revere (hence why Revere got all the glory in Longfellow's poem here) but on their later ride to Concord, Revere was captured by the British, while Dawes managed to evade them. It turns out though, that Dawes and his wife are probably buried at the Forest Hills Cemetery a few miles away and more likely, only his cousin Thomas Dawes is buried here. But the marker stands nonetheless.
No worries, just a grave from 1658. No big deal. This particular headstone has an interesting story. It's the OLDEST headstone in the burying ground, but it was originally found under the street next to the Old State House in 1830. But apparently his body is here because no body was ever found near the Old State House!
I try to imagine this will look prettier in the summer.
You can see the depth of King's Chapel here, from the burying ground. Interestingly, not many actual congregants of King's Chapel are actually buried here.
John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and pretty much his entire family is also buried here. John Winthrop was the 2nd, 6th, 9th and 12th governor of Massachusetts, and both his son and grandson went on to become governor's of the Colony of Connecticut.
This is just so sad to me. A gravestone is pretty much someone's final marking in the world - maybe the only thing to ever tell future generations that you even existed at all. I wish these were in better shape.
This building is so skinny! This is the Winthrop building that was down the street from - it was built in 1894, and it was the first skyscraper built in Boston that had a steel frame. It's known as the Winthrop building because John Winthrop's second home was right next to it (although that is no longer standing.) Interestingly, the building has "Spring Lane" and "Water Street" on either side of it because there had been a Great Spring here back in the 1600s in the days of John Winthrop, who's property was on the other side of Spring Lane (the alleyway on the left on the building in this picture).
The real reason I wanted to add this here was because Mary Chilton, the first woman to step onto North American soil off of the Mayflower lived on Spring Lane with her husband John Winslow. They purchased this house in 1671, and John died here in 1674. Mary soon followed, passing away in 1679. She was burying at King's Chapel Burying Ground - and I didn't get a picture of either her gravestone or her house! (Pats self on back for stellar photography performance). This building is just a 4 minute walk from the King's Chapel Burying ground - basically around the corner!
As I walked back to my office, I spotted this! Look! A random plaque on the wall of a building that states the first public Catholic mass was celebrated right here on November 2, 1788!
Another site I happened to pass by on my way back to High Street was the Boston Irish Family Memorial. My Irish side of the family emigrated to Boston in 1883 (although they kept on moving and settled in southern Indiana).
Surrounding the monument is a series of smaller granite monuments with inscriptions about the Great Famine and why the Irish fled Ireland for America.
A fungus hit the potato crops hard, and many starved as a result. To add insult to injury, the British government was exporting a bunch of grain from Ireland over to England at that time, seemingly indifferent to the problems happening in their neighbor country.
During the famine, about a million people died, and two million Irish came across the ocean to America. There was another near famine due to poor potato harvests in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and because the worst of this happened in County Mayo, I'm one of those lucky Americans that get to claim Irish ancestry!
Until next time King's Chapel Burying Ground and Irish Family Memorial!
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