USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Topographical and historical description of Boston > Part 20
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
a stone front, measuring about thirty-nine by seventy- five feet, where they occasionally held meetings, but it being of very little use to the Society, it was sold at auction, and on the thirtieth of May, 1866, the Quakers ceased to be owners of a meeting-house in Boston.
The early members of the Society of Friends were many of them remarkable men. Mr. Mumford, as has already been said, was largely interested as a builder in the town, and he was the prime mover in the settlement of the town of Sutton in this State. Mr. Edward Ship- pen was a merchant of note, who removed early to New- port, Rhode Island, and then to Philadelphia, where, under the city charter of 1701, he was the first mayor, having held important positions in the State Legisla- ture. Mr. Edward Wanton was an enterprising ship- builder of Boston, and subsequently of Scituate, and the father of Governor William Wanton, of Rhode Island. Walter Clark was also Governor of Rhode Island, and one of the Council of the New England Colonies under Governor Andros, by appointment of James II. What- ever may be the traditionary and even recorded history of the early Quakers, it should not be forgotten that they then, as now, had among their number persons of the greatest excellence as well as of the greatest endurance.
CHAPTER XVI.
CENTRAL BURYING-GROUND.
Crowded State of Middle District Burial-Ground in 1740 .. . Committee to locate another Graveyard, in 1748 . . . Report in Favor of Southeast Corner of the Common rejected . . . Location selected in 1754 for the South Burying-Ground, now called the Central Burying-Ground . . . Other Names of the Graveyard . . . Dimensions of the Lot . . . The Foster Lot at the Cor- ner ··· Establishment of the Burial-Ground .. . Date of Tombs .. . Orna- mental Trees set out in 1830 and 1840 . . . Fence erected in 1839 ... Mysteri- ous Gravestone . . . Place for the Burial of Strangers . . . Mystic Emblems . . . Oldest Gravestone · · · Monuments · · · Supposed Goblins · · · Inscriptions . . . Mons. Julien · · · Verses.
IN consequence of the crowded state of the grounds belonging to the King's Chapel and Granary Burying- Grounds, great complaints were made by the under- takers, and petitions were occasionally presented to the Selectmen of the town asking for relief, the object being the laying out a new yard nearer to the South End. The petition of John Chambers and other gravediggers, in 1740, alluded to in a preceding chapter, had consider- able effect, and set the town officials looking about for the proper place for a new cemetery, although the object was not finally accomplished until sixteen years later.
On the twenty-eighth of March, 1748, a committee, appointed on the sixteenth of the same month, reported to the town that they had "considered of the premises, and were of opinion that a piece of ground at the lower end of the Common, adjoining to the pasture belonging
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to Hon. James Allen, Esq., is a place the most con- venient for a burying ground." This report elicited much debate, and it was finally recommitted to the gen- tlemen who had presented it, with a desire that a plan be taken of the land proposed by them for the burial-place and that they consider whether it will not be best and most convenient that a highway should be laid out between said land of Mr. Allen and the Common, and they were directed to report again at the next general town meeting. On the ninth of May following, the com- mittee reported agreeably to instructions, presenting a plan of a lot near the southeast corner of the Common, containing about an acre and a half, and bounded east by the Tremont street mall, and about three hundred and twenty-four feet north of the present Boylston street, the intervening lot of land belonging to the heirs of Col. Thomas Fitch; and they recommended laying out a twenty foot highway on the south. The proposed lot was part of the Common, and was not taken for the graveyard, probably because the townsmen did not wish to abridge their "area of freedom"; and consequently the matter was deferred, and the old burial-grounds were crowded a little more during the next eight years.
On the fifteenth of May, 1754, a more earnest and direct petition for a burial-place at the South End was presented in town meeting, and referred to a committee consisting of Thomas Hancock and Thomas Greene, Esqs., and Messrs. Jacob Parker and John Hill and John Phillips, Esq., all prominent and influential citizens of the town. This committee reported on the seven- teenth of the next September, recommending the pur- chase of Col. Thomas Fitch's pasture at the bottom of the Common, the estate then belonging to Andrew
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
Oliver, Jr .; and the report, after the usual amount of debate, was accepted, and further action deferred until the eleventh of the following October, when it was voted to purchase the lot. The portion of Col. Fitch's pasture then determined on for the South Burying- Ground, as it was called at first, - and which afterwards was for many years known as the Common Burying- Ground, until it was designated as the Central Burying- Ground in 1810, in consequence of the establishment of another burial-place at the southerly part of Wash- ington street, - is the same that is now fenced in, and formerly included the portion of Boylston street mall which intervenes between it and the street. The land, about two acres in extent, was purchased of Andrew Oliver, Jr., and his wife Mary, who was a daughter of Col. Fitch (they having been married on the twentieth of June, 1728); and the boundaries as then given were, by deed dated on the ninth of June, 1756, "easterly on land sett off to Mrs. Martha Allen, there measuring three hundred and twenty feet, southerly on Frogg Lane so called there measuring three hundred and twenty-one feet, westerly on the Common or Training Field there measuring on a bevelling line three hundred and fifty-five feet, and northerly on the same Common or Training Field there measuring one hundred and eighty-nine feet and an half to the first bounds." These dimensions differ somewhat from those of the lot as formerly included within the old brick walls.
Although this ground was frequently designated as the "Common Burying-Ground," it appears that no part of it ever belonged to the Common; a remark which is equally true in regard to the portion of land lying east
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of it, and now partially occupied as a deer park, the same having been purchased on the sixth of October, 1787, of William Foster, the father-in-law of the late Hon. Harrison Gray Otis. Since the name of the street on the south was changed from Frog lane to Boylston street, about the year 1809, the burial-ground has fre- quently been called " the Burying Ground on Boylston street," as the names "South " and "Central " were so uncertain in their designation, being equally applicable to other grounds elsewhere situated.
At this late date, it is almost impossible to imagine what preparation was necessary to be made to render the pasture proper for burials, except to enclose it with a good substantial fence; but it is certain that some- thing was done, as the following record was made of a meeting of the Selectmen held on the twenty-fourth of November, 1756 :- "As the Burying Place at the bot- tom of the Common, lately purchased by the Town of Andrew Oliver, Junr., Esqr., is now fit to bury the dead in, the Selectmen have therefore appointed John Ran- stead to have the care of said Burying Place, and to bury the dead there." The early burials, as in the other yards, were in graves, there being no evidence of the building of any tomb there until the year 1793, when Mr. John Just Geyer, a stonecutter, was allowed "to erect " one, "under the direction of Mr. Seaver." From this time until 1800, a few were built each year; but in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803 a large number were built, chiefly by Messrs. Nicholas Peirce, Jr., and John Peirce, two bricklayers living at the south part of the town. About this last year the old brick fence was completed, and the burial-ground considered finished; but in the year 1839 two rows of tombs on the south
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
side were discontinued, and the Boylston street mall laid out, and other tombs built on the western side to compensate for those which were permanently closed.
In the year 1830 a few liberal persons subscribed a small sum of money, which was expended in purchasing and setting out ornamental trees in this graveyard; and in 1840 a large number of trees and shrubs were set out, which gave a very handsome appearance to the premises.
How early interments were made in the yard cannot be exactly ascertained. A small stone, bearing date at least seven years before the establishment of the ceme- tery, may now be seen standing within the enclosure, with the name of the infant it was intended to be a memorial of entirely obliterated. The inscription is as follows: -
SON TO CAP. WILL.
. & MARY
his
wife died
Augt
24th 1749
AGED
14 DAYS
Who the incomprehensible little child was, and how the stone came in its present place, do not appear; nor are there any indications by surrounding objects to help explain the mystery.
Tradition says that the British soldiers who died in the barracks on the Common were buried in this yard; and, although this may have been the fact, there is no evidence that such was the case. It is much more reasonable to infer that the ground was early used for the burial of strangers and Roman Catholics; for the gravestones denote this fact sufficiently well, the graves of persons from various foreign countries, even from
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China, and from many of the New England States, being designated by conspicuous memorials. The square and compasses, emblematic of the mystic art, are more frequently found here than in the other burial-grounds in Boston; and in one marked instance the cross of crucifixion is found with the masonic emblems.
If the child's gravestone is rejected as the oldest, the following may be considered as holding that position :
Here lies Buried ye Body of Benjamin FROBISHER SON of Mr. WILLIAM & Mrs MARY FROBISHER, who died ye 4th of Octr, 1761, Aged 1 Year & 25 Days.
The child, over whose grave this stone now stands, was undoubtedly the son of a noted soap-boiler who dwelt on Union street, and was buried within five years after the establishment of the burial-ground.
There are only four memorials which can be called monuments; two of these are the horizontal tablets over the tomb of the Wyers and over that of Hon. Thomas Davis, at the southeast and southwest corners, both having inscriptions, the first in remarkable Latin, and the latter in good English; the remaining two are over tombs where were buried Sarah, the wife of Dudley Atkins Tyng, and Samuel Sprague, a sterling old Bos- ton mechanic. These last being upright and con- structed of white marble, and, moreover, being situated near the path leading across the Common to the corner of Pleasant street, have in the dim twilight of bygone days been shunned by errant youngsters as goblins of times long past; but Mrs. Tyng and old Mr. Sprague
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
were very respectable and quiet people, and not being night walkers while living have not commenced such unprofitable business since their decease, though their monuments may appear in motion to persons passing by them at late hours.
The inscriptions in the Central Burying-Ground are in no way remarkable; yet some of the gravestones have verses cut in them which are somewhat characteristic. In the northerly part of the yard, an unpretending stone marks the resting-place of a humble, but formerly very indispensable individual, whose name has not been en- . tirely forgotten. At the close of the last century, and a few years in the present, the most noted restaurateur of the town was Monsieur Julien,-he who served the public at his house at the corner of Milk and Congress streets. The inscription on the stone is as follows:
In memory of Mr. John B. Julien, who died June 30th, 1805. Æt. 52. In hope of that immortal bliss, To rise & reign where Jesus is, His flesh in peaceful slumber lies Till the last trump shall sound, arise!
There are those who think that this famous man lived many years later, undoubtedly because the widow carried on the business after his decease, as was adver- tised in one of the obituary notices of her husband, and perhaps because his famous soup is not yet excluded from sumptuous bills of fare on festive occasions.
A more extensive effort is that which can be read on the gravestone of a young Scituate woman, who died in 1802, at the age of twenty-one years:
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON
Beneath this humble Stone, here lies a Youth, Whose Soul was Goodness, and whose Heart was Truth Crop'a like a Flow'r she wither'd in her Bloom, Tho' flatt'ring Life had promis'd Years to come; The Years she liv'd in Virtue's paths she trod, And now her Spirit soars to meet her God; In realms of Bliss, where Joys eternal reign, Devoid of Care, and uncontroll'd by Pain.
Perhaps this chapter cannot be better closed than with the following post-mortem lecture, which the head- stone of Mr. Charles Wyman has been freely giving in the same enclosure since the eighth of July, 1785, when he died, in the fifty-seventh year of his age:
Beneath these clods of silent dust, I sleep where all ye living must, The gayest youth & fairest face In time must be in this dark place.
CHAPTER XVII.
SOUTH BURYING-GROUND AND CEMETERIES.
South Burying-Ground, on Washington street, 1810 .. . Its Situation and Boundaries ... Near the Old Place of Execution ... Marsh Filled up and Graded · ·· Tombs first built in 1827 ... Part of Yard cut off in 1866 .. . Mr. Hewes, the Old Superintendent of Burials . . . Cemeteries under the Churches - Christ Church Cemetery in Salem street, 1732 . .. Ancient Burial Casket with Evergreens . .. Inscription on Tomb of Rev. Dr. Cutler, the First Pas- tor of Christ Church . . . Burial of Major Pitcairn, Royal Marine . . . Trinity Church . .. Old and the New Cemeteries . .. King's Chapel Cemetery, Old and New ... The Old Building ... Tombs of Rev. Mr. Myles and Sir Henry Frankland . . . Burial of Gov. Shirley in 1771 ... Inscriptions in the Chapel ... St. Paul's Church Cemetery . . . Park street Church Cemetery . . . Discon- tinued.
IN 1810 the necessity for a cemetery at the South End of the town existing, the South Burying-Ground on Washington street was opened for burials, which for the space of seventeen years were made entirely in graves, the lot having been laid out for the purpose by the town authorities. This burial-ground is situated between Newton street on the northeast, and Concord street on the southwest, from both of which it is separated by dwelling-houses; and between Washington street on the northwest, and James street on the southeast. Its northerly part has recently been encroached upon by the St. James Hotel, an elegant edifice, erected in 1867-8. It is very neatly laid out into four squares, which are ornamented with trees, and the whole is surrounded with durable walls, that on Washington street being of ham-
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mered granite. In its earlier years it was the scene of many of the capital executions; for near its most east- erly part, which formerly extended to tide-water, usually stood the gallows, and the culprits were generally buried in deep graves within the cemetery near the place of their execution. Soon after the building of the Leverett street jail, hangings were performed more privately, and the gallows on the neck discontinued. In still earlier times the gallows stood further north, near the present position of Malden street; and, in the well remembered execution of Samuel Tulley for piracy; it stood at South Boston, and for Henry Phillips, the murderer of Den- negri at the Roebuck Tavern, in Columbia square.
As late as the year 1837, there was very little come- liness to the South Burying-Ground. A large portion of it was marshy, and consequently wet; and until a large quantity of proper soil was carted upon it, as was done that year, and the surface graded, the place was hardly fit for the purposes of sepulture, although, even then, the front part of it was nearly filled.
In 1827, tombs were first built at the sides of the yard; and from year to year, as purchasers were found, others were erected in a substantial manner, until the number amounted to one hundred and sixty-two, and the dimensions of the yard were fixed at three hundred and five by three hundred and fourteen feet; which proportion the yard continued to hold until the year 1866, when it was curtailed of its size, the tombs on the northerly side having been discontinued, and a strip of land ceded to the abutter on that side for yard room and another portion for the hotel.
The gravestones in this yard are not numerous, and strictly speaking there are no monumental inscriptions
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
within it, although there are several granite structures standing upon vaults in the central part of several of the squares, and at their corners.
One person should not be forgotten in connection with this cemetery - Mr. Samuel Hill Hewes, the first Superintendent of Burials, elected on the establishment of the office in 1822, and continued in office until his decease in 1845, he having served the town in the same capacity since 1818, at which time he succeeded Daniel Oliver. Mr. Hewes, from his first entrance upon office, took a particular interest in this yard; and it is mainly owing to him that it has attained its present symmetri- cal and neat appearance. The great passion this gentle- man possessed for having everything appear regular induced him to lay out walks in all the old graveyards, and to arrange the gravestones in rows, representing companies of winged cherubim in martial array. Mr. Hewes died on the ninth of April, 1845, in the eighty- fifth year of his age, and was interred in an angle of the southwesterly square of his favorite resort during the last years of his useful life.
Besides the burial-grounds already described, there . are, or have been, on the peninsula five cemeteries, dis- tinctly so called to distinguish them as being built beneath church edifices. Of these, the Christ Church Cemetery, under Christ Church in Salem street, is very ancient and contains thirty-three tombs. The Church was built by Episcopalians in 1723, the corner-stone being laid on the fifteenth of April and the first public worship held in it on the twenty-ninth of December of the same year. Interments were made under the church soon after its erection, and a tomb had been built before the twenty-third of October, 1732, when permission was
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granted to T. Carrington to build a tomb adjoining to the one already built there; but measures were not taken for the establishment of a cemetery until the thirtieth of the last-named month, when it was determined that the vault beneath the church should be laid out for the pur- pose. One of these was appropriated very early by a Mr. Wheate, who devoted it to the good purpose of burying his deceased friends, one of whom, the wife of Honorable John Wheelwright, was deposited there in the year 1740, the earliest date now to be found in the cemetery. About fifty years ago a body was exhumed in the northeast corner of the cemetery, curiously pre- served by embalming, and with it were found evergreens. This body had then lain there eighty or more years; and was originally encased in two caskets, each covered with coarse linen cloth impregnated with a protective gum. Mr. Thomas, whose remains were thus discovered, had died in Bermuda, and been brought back to Boston for burial. Although care seems to have been taken to preserve the tablet which covered this grave, no evidence of it can now be traced within the cemetery. On the casterly side is a tomb formerly belonging to Capt. Thomas Potts, in which was buried the first rector of the church, and upon a small slab may now be read the following inscription:
Here Lyes entombed the Body of the Revd. TIMOTHY CUTLER, D. D. first Minister of this Church, deceased Augst 17th, 1765, Aged 81 Years. Also the Body of Mrs. ELISATH CUTLER, widow of the above, died Sept the 12th, 1771, Aged 81 Years.
With the exception of the thirty-three tombs and the heating apparatus of the church, nothing is to be
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
seen within this enclosure made sacred by the burial of many of the worthy old residents of the North End. It is related, however, in the traditions of the old peo- ple who have dwelt in the neighborhood of this ceme- tery, that Major Pitcairn of the British Marines, who led the troops to Concord and was repulsed, and who afterwards fell mortally wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill, was taken after the last-named battle to a house in Prince street, where the gasometer now stands, and after death was temporarily deposited under Christ Church, and afterwards carried to England for burial. Be this as it may, it is certain that during the siege of Boston, in the war of the revolution, the cemetery was frequently used for the burial of British officers.
The old wooden building of Trinity Church, which formerly stood at the corner of Summer and Hawley streets (the former anciently known as "the street lead- ing to the fort," and the latter as "Bishop's Alley"), and the corner-stone of which was laid on the fifteenth of April, 1734, by Rev. Commissary Roger Price, the rector of King's Chapel, and the building consecrated on the fifteenth of August, 1735, contained twenty- five tombs in its cellar. The corner-stone of the new building was laid on the fifteenth of September, 1828, by Rev. J. S. J. Gardiner, D. D., the Rector, and the church was consecrated on the eleventh of Novem- ber, 1829. New tombs were built beneath the new church, and the remains formerly deposited were re- tained in Trinity Church Cemetery, as the new place for burials is called, and in which are fifty-five tombs, one of them generally known as the Stranger's Vault. Like most church cemeteries, there is nothing specially to interest a visitor to this; for little else can be seen or
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learned except the names of the owners of the different vaults, -the names of the deceased, who have been de- posited there having been, it would seem, designedly, and surely most effectually kept out of sight, and only to be known on examination of the City Registrar's carefully preserved records, or the plates within or upon the mouldering coffins securely guarded by strongly locked doors.
Some time about the year 1688, the first Episcopal church was built in Boston; the exact time is not known when the building was commenced, nor when it was completed, nor by what authority a portion of the Old Burying-Ground was taken for its site, other than the usual authority made use of by the tyrannical usurper, Andros - namely, that "might made right." Why Andros did not take for this purpose the land on the opposite side of Tremont street, which he much coveted, is equally a problem of uncertainty, without it was be- cause he preferred to contend with the dead rather than with the living, and so invaded the tenements of the former. Sure it is that, about the time the tyrant was sent back to England, a wooden building was erected at the corner on Tremont and School streets, which was designated as the King's Chapel, and was supplied with a small number of parishioners several years before pews were built for their accommodation. This old building, which was much enlarged about the year 1710, almost equivalent to a re-building, had a square tower, sur- mounted by a four-sided pyramid, upon the top of which was a tall staff, half way up on which was a wooden crown, and on the top was a weather-cock. This answered the society about sixty years, when, in conse- quence of the decayed condition of the old building, and
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
more particularly as a considerable part of the roof had been carried away by a violent storm, an effort was made for the erection of a new building of stone, which proving successful, the wooden church was taken down in 1748, and the new one commenced. Under the old wooden building were several tombs, the first mention of which is recorded on the sixth of December, 1717, when it was voted that "Mr. Mills " and "Mr. Franklin" have liberty to build a tomb under the east end of the church. This vote really meant to give accommodation to Rev. Samuel Myles, the Rector, who died in March, 1727-28, and to Sir Henry Frankland, quite a noted and wealthy townsman, whose princely house stood beside that in which Governor Hutchinson dwelt in Garden Court street, sometimes anciently known as Frizzell's lane, because an opulent merchant named John Frizzell once lived at the Fleet street corner. How many tombs were under the old church is not known; but it is certain that many of the noted Episcopalians of the day buried their dead there, among whom were the wife and daughter of Governor William Shirley. When the old wooden church was taken down in 1748, after much bickering with the Selectmen of the town, the wardens of King's Chapel were allowed to extend their territory north and east, the bodies to be removed from the land taken for the church, and carefully buried in some part of the Old Burying-Ground. One Selectman and a very few influential persons made trouble with the church, and compelled the wardens to purchase land on both sides of School street, partly a portion of the yard before the new City Hall, and partly where the old brick Latin School House stood, at the corner of Chapman Place (then, as it ought now to be, named
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