Historic cemetery in Massachusetts, United States
United States historic place
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Forest Hills Cemetery
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Forest Hills Cemetery entrance in August 2007
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Show map of Massachusetts
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Location
| 95 Forest Hills Ave.
Boston
,
Massachusetts
, U.S.
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Area
| 250 acres (100 ha)
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Built
| 1848
(
1848
)
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Architect
| Billings, Hammatt; et al.
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Architectural style
| Colonial
and
Gothic Revival
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NRHP reference
No.
| 04001219
[1]
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Added to NRHP
| November 17, 2004
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Forest Hills Cemetery
is a historic 275-acre (111.3 ha) rural cemetery, greenspace,
arboretum
, and
sculpture
garden
in the
Forest Hills
section of
Jamaica Plain
, a neighborhood in
Boston
,
Massachusetts
. The cemetery was established in 1848 as a public municipal cemetery for
Roxbury, Massachusetts
, but was privatized when Roxbury was
annexed to Boston
in 1868.
Overview
[
edit
]
Forest Hills Cemetery is located in the southern part of
Boston
's
Jamaica Plain
neighborhood. It is roughly bounded on the southwest by Walk Hill Street, the southeast, by the American Legion Highway, and the northeast by the
Arborway
and
Morton Street
, where its entrance is located. To the northwest, it is separated from Hyde Park Avenue by a small residential area. It abuts
Franklin Park
, which lies to the northeast, and is a short distance from the
Arnold Arboretum
to the northwest and forms a greenspace that augments the city's
Emerald Necklace
of parkland.
The cemetery has a number of notable monuments, including some created by notable sculptors, including
Daniel Chester French
, whose
Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor
is in the cemetery, and
John Wilson
, whose
Firemen's Memorial
is there.
Forest Hills Cemetery is an active cemetery where
interments
take place on most days of the year.
History
[
edit
]
On March 28, 1848, Roxbury City Council, the municipal board in charge of the area at that time, gave an order for the purchase of the farms of the Seaverns family to establish a rural municipal park cemetery. Inspired by
Mount Auburn Cemetery
, Forest Hills Cemetery was designed by Henry A. S. Dearborn to provide a park-like setting to bury and remember family and friends. In the year the cemetery was established, another
14
+
1
⁄
2
acres (5.9 ha) were purchased from John Parkinson. This made for a little more than 71 acres (29 ha) at a cost of $27,894. The area was later increased to 225 acres (91.1 ha).
After operating as the municipal cemetery for
Roxbury, Massachusetts
for seven years, it was privatized in 1868 as Roxbury was annexed by neighboring
Boston
.
[2]
In 1893, the first
crematorium
in Massachusetts was added to the cemetery, along with other features like a scattering garden, an indoor
columbarium
and an outdoor columbarium. In 1927, anarchists
Nicola Sacco
and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were cremated here after their execution; their ashes were later returned to Italy.
Notable people interred at Forest Hills
[
edit
]
- Rufus Anderson
, missionary and author
[3]
- Harrison Henry Atwood
, U.S. Congressman (1895?1897) and
Boston
architect
- Hugh Bancroft
, president of
The Wall Street Journal
- Clarence W. Barron
, president of
Dow Jones & Company
- Cyrus Augustus Bartol
, American preacher and writer
[4]
- Amy Beach
, composer and pianist
- Andrew Carney
, entrepreneur and philanthropist
- James Freeman Clarke
, author
- Channing H. Cox
,
Governor of Massachusetts
from 1921 to 1925
- E. E. Cummings
, poet and artist
- Fanny Davenport
, actress
- William Dawes
,
American Revolutionary War
minuteman
[5]
)
- William Dwight
,
Union Army
general in the
American Civil War
[6]
- Eugene N. Foss
,
Governor of Massachusetts
from 1911 to 1914
- Lee M. Friedman
, lawyer and historian
- William Lloyd Garrison
,
abolitionist
- William Gaston
,
Governor of Massachusetts
from 1875 to 1876
- Kahlil Gibran
, sculptor
- Adoniram Judson Gordon
(1836?1895), preacher, writer, composer, and founder of
Gordon College
- Curtis Guild
,
Governor of Massachusetts
from 1906 to 1909
- Edward Everett Hale
, author
- William Heath
,
Continental Army
general in the
American Revolutionary War
- Karl Heinzen
, author
- Edgar J. Helms
, founder of Goodwill Industries
- Charles Hiller Innes
, Massachusetts politician
- Jennie Kimball
, 19th-century actor, soubrette, and theatrical manager
- Faik Konitza
,
Albanian
intellectual, writer, journalist, and politician
- Samuel P. Langley
, aviation pioneer and the namesake of
NASA
's
Langley Research Center
- Reggie Lewis
, professional basketball player for the
Boston Celtics
- Francis Cabot Lowell
, businessman for whom
Lowell, Massachusetts
is named
- John Lowell
, 18th century U.S. federal judge
- John Lowell
, 19th century U.S. federal judge
- Martin Milmore
, sculptor
- Carlotta Monterey
, actor and wife of
Eugene O'Neill
- Godfrey Morse
, attorney
- Albert W. Nickerson
, railroad executive
[7]
- Theofan S. Noli
, prime minister of
Albania
and bishop
- Eugene O'Neill
, playwright
- Joseph C. Pelletier
,
Suffolk County, Massachusetts
district attorney and
Knights of Columbus
supreme advocate
- Ambrose Ranney
, U.S. Congressman
[8]
- Anne Sexton
, poet
- Pauline Agassiz Shaw
, reformer and philanthropist
- Lysander Spooner
, American abolitionist, writer, and
anarchist
- Amy Wentworth Stone
, children's writer
- Lucy Stone
, suffragist
- Anna Eliot Ticknor
, distance learning pioneer
- George Ticknor
, founding trustee of the
Boston Public Library
- Joseph William Torrey
, founder of the American colony of "Ellena" in
Borneo
[9]
- Joseph Warren
, physician and
Continental Army
patriot killed at
Battle of Bunker Hill
for whom
Warren County, New Jersey
is named
- Lawrence Whitney
, Olympic bronze medalist
- Simon Willard, clockmaker of
Simon Willard clocks
[10]
- Mary Evans Wilson
, civil rights activist
- John A. Winslow
, admiral in
American Civil War
- Jacob Wirth
, restaurateur
- John DeWolf
,
maritime fur trader
, first American to circumnavigate the world by way of overland across Siberia; uncle of
Herman Melville
- Two British
war graves
for a
Royal Field Artillery
soldier in
World War I
and a
Merchant Navy
sailor in
World War II
.
[11]
Gallery
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
42°17′42″N
71°06′22″W
/
42.295°N 71.106°W
/
42.295; -71.106
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