Old Burying Ground

The Old Burying Ground is adjacent to First Parish Cambridge and Christ Church

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Location:

Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

Designation:

Cambridge Common National Register District

MANAGED BY:

City of Cambridge

Located across the street from Harvard Yard and adjacent to Cambridge Common, the Old Burying Ground has been a centerpiece of the vibrant New England community since its establishment in about 1635. Like most settlements in the New World, establishing a place to bury the dead was an important priority. Harvard College also saw the burial ground as necessary to place students who had died from diseases like smallpox, which were common in the 1600s. From its establishment in the mid-1600s until the early 1900s, the Old Burying Ground took in new burials. It now offers a look into life and death in the Colonial Period of the Greater Boston area.

The Old Burying Ground has several notable burials including:

• half a dozen Presidents of Harvard College
• nineteen soldiers from the Revolutionary War, including enslaved people Neptune Frost and Cato (Stedman) Freeman
• members of the intermingled colonial elite families of Brattle Street, incluing the Vassalls, Phipps, and Olivers
• diplomat Francis Dana (1743-1811), poet Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879), and many members of the Dana family
• artist Washington Allston (1779-1843)