Today, the Charlestown Preservation Society led a guided tour and clean up of the Phipps Street Burying Ground at the corner of Phipps and Lawrence Streets in Charlestown. Begun in the 1630s, it is one of five 17th century burying grounds in Boston, and the oldest real estate in Charlestown (as the rest of the town burned to the ground during the Battle of Bunker Hill).

The cemetery's irregular layout was allegedly intended to correspond to a map of the town; until the mid-1800s, this area was actually waterfront property along the Charles River (see Peter Tufts' Plan of Charlestown Peninsula) but today is bordered by Bunker Hill Community College and Mishawum Park apartments.

Historian Carol Bratley explained that the stones are grouped in rectangular family plots, rather than neat rows. Many of them were carved by the Lamson family of stonecarvers, whose work is found all over New England.

She also explained the designs that prevailed in different centuries: graves of the 1600s featured death's heads - stylized skulls with wings and cross bones. Winged cherubs didn't appear until the 1700s, and then the willow (a classic symbol of mourning) and urn (where Imperial Romans stored the ashes of deceased) appeared in 1800s. Here are a couple of beautifully sculpted and remarkably preserved examples:


There are memorials to numerous historical figures in the cemetery, including John Harvard, who died in 1638 and left half his estate and entire 300-book library to a new college in Cambridge. Harvard's original grave marker has disappeared, but Harvard College erected a granide obelisk here in 1828 to commemmorate him.

And of course George Bunker and family, of the eponymous Bunker Hill (whose marker, sadly, has been vandalized by "Clyde's Crew").

But probably most interesting to me were the graves of Nathaniel Austin and family, Middlesex County Sheriff and owner of the stone house in which I now live:

There were grand groupings of headstones like those of the very large Frothingham family, and somber, multi-person plots like this one, which under all the children's names reads:
Our lives is ever on the wing
And death is ever nigh
The moment when our life begins
We all begin to die

There are only two markers for men of color here, tucked under a tree at the far edge of the grounds, which was customary for the time (as was denoting the color of their skin, right on the headstone):

Note the inscriptions in these close-ups of the two to the left of the tree, above:


While the city and the Preservation Society work hard to keep Phipps St. Burying Ground clean and preserved, past problems with loitering and vandalism have forced them to now keep the gates locked and only opened upon request.
See the full photo set on Flickr.
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