{"nrhp_refnum":"04001472","name":"Fairview Cemetery","other_names":["East Burying Ground"],"category":"site","location":{"address":"Main St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Westford","county":"Middlesex County","state":"MA","lat":42.58727452100007,"lon":-71.42014615467298,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2005-01-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Community Planning and Development","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Fairview Cemetery, formerly the East Burying Ground, is a town cemetery on Main Street in Westford, Massachusetts. It dates from the early 18th century and was reshaped in the late 19th century into a Rural/Garden-style landscape.","why_significant":"The cemetery is the town's oldest and largest burial ground, with about 10,000 burials and roughly 300 Colonial slate markers. It shows the shift from a plain colonial burial ground to a Garden-style cemetery, with walls, gateways and curving avenues laid out from an 1876 plan by engineer Edward Symmes. Its gravestones illustrate changing carving styles and attitudes toward death, and it contains the graves of local industrialists, politicians, ministers, mill hands and farmers.","narrative":"Fairview Cemetery sits on Main Street in Westford, about a mile east of the town center. Known first as the East Burying Ground, it came into use in the early 18th century, and an early stone is reputed to bear the date 1702. Roughly 300 Colonial slate markers survive in the central section, carved with death's heads, portals and, later, urns and willows. In the late 19th century the town's cemetery commissioners reshaped the grounds on the model of Rural cemeteries, building granite walls and gateways, grading avenues and planting trees. Engineer Edward Symmes drew the 1876 plan for the curving paths of the East Division, and the cemetery took the name Fairview in 1896 after a petition. Later additions came in 1924 and 1936. About 10,000 people are buried here, from mill owners and ministers to farmers and mill hands. The cemetery still receives burials, though no plots remain for sale. Its markers, tombs, walls and a summer house record changing tastes in memorial design.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Edward Symmes (1876 plan); stone walls by Nathan S. Hamblin and George Yapp; hearse house by George Drew","architectural_style":"N/A (Rural/Garden cemetery landscape)","criteria":[],"status_note":"The cemetery remains in use for burials but has run out of plots to sell; the former hearse house serves as the superintendent's office.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:13:04.560236-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/97/7960/63796097/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/04001472.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/04001472/c67d75ee0f-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/04001472/c67d75ee0f-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"John Phelan","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairview_Cemetery,_Westford_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">John Phelan</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairview_Cemetery,_Westford_MA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63796097","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview_Cemetery_(Westford,_Massachusetts)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5430803"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/middlesex-county/fairview-cemetery-04001472/"}