Respect the dead

The Central Burial Ground is located on the Boston Common. It is believed to be the fourth cemetery to be located in the city of Boston, after the Copps Hill, King's Chapel, and Granary burial grounds, dating back to 1750's.

According to the internet, this cemetery was "least desirable" due to its location furthest from the rest of the city (at least, at that time). The city of Boston's website states that those buried here include "British common soldiers who died in combat or of disease during the Revolution, foreigners who died while in Boston, American patriots from the battle of Bunker Hill and the Boston Tea Party; painter Gilbert Stuart, and composer William Billings".

The Central Burial Ground is mentioned in the recent book, A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900 by Stephen Puleo.

When the Boston Transit Commission began building the first subway, back in 1895, they dug up the land on the south end of the Boston Common bordering Boylston Street between Tremont and Charles Street South.

Weeks after the project began, workers dug up old bones and remnants of tombs. Turned out, an old graveyard had been located here. A site that some people knew was there and had warned about. (Whoops)

Dr. Samuel Green mentioned the burial ground in a report he submitted to the transit commission, months earlier. After they discovered the cemetery, he was contacted to deal with the issue.

It took nearly seven months, but by November 1895, Green had estimated that portions of 910 bodies had been dug up and would need to be reinterred. On November 14 and 15, workers performed the task in an adjoining burial ground on the Common, carefully burying nearly seventy-five small boxes, each containing a miscellaneous assortment of bones. The boxes, about one foot by six inches in size, each bearing the date "1895," were buried in a lot twenty-three by thirteen feet, which was marked by a single slat tablet bearing these words: "Here Were Reinterred the Remains of Persons Found Under the Boylston Street Mall During the Digging of the Subway. 1895."

I had always thought the burial ground was off-limits to visitors but when I walked by yesterday I saw that the gate to the cemetery was open. (A woman was walking out of it with her dog on a leash after he had obviously taken a huge dump in there. Of course, that's what cemeteries are for!)

There are three sections to the cemetery, from what I can gather. There's the old, old part where Gilbert Stuart and others were buried back in the 1700's. Then, there's a long, narrow section, which includes tombs relocated there when Boylston Street was widened in 1836. Separate from this is the grave site dedicated to those whose bones were found in 1895.

More:

City of Boston website
Wikipedia
Celebrate Boston