My first fall trip to Boston wouldn't have been complete without a trip to the Granary Burying Ground, home to notable interments such as Paul Revere and John Hancock.
The Granary was established in 1660 when the King's Chapel Burying Ground across the street began to fill up and run out of space. This burying ground is the resting place of an estimated 5,000 people, only around half of which still have headstones. Today, the stones are laid out in neat rows, with many oriented outward toward the walking paths that were installed in the mid 19th century. While it's natural to think that the Granary has always been this way, the reality is that the stones have been moved around into the rows they stand in now, to accommodate mowers and to make it easier to install pathways. Essentially, this means that the stones don't necessarily match the graves they belong to, and there are interments underneath the pathways as well.
The Granary is the resting place of figures who defined not only Boston's history but the history of the nation as a whole. The city of Boston is inextricably linked with the beginnings of America, and this is reflected in the cemetery. There are five people buried here who died in the Boston Massacre, which was the bloody culmination of the tension between the American Colonists and the British soldiers occupying the city that occurred on March 5, 1770. Additionally, there are three signers of the Declaration of Independence interred in the graveyard, including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine. In the very center of the site, there's a large monument to Benjamin Franklin's family.
The cemetery has examples of work from the earliest stone cutters of Boston, including William Mumford and Nathaniel Emmes. For the most part, the stones are well preserved, but there is deterioration in this cemetery, just like any other.
Today, the cemetery opens around 8-830am when the gates are opened and closes at 5 pm. If you go right when it opens like I did, the graveyard will be quiet for a few still moments before the first tours start to arrive. In general, the Granary has become a great place to stroll and take in history.
Sources - Granary Burying Ground | Boston.gov
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