Dorchester North Burying Ground

Dorchester North Burying Ground occupies 3.27 acres at the corner of Columbia Road and Stoughton Street in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. Established in 1633, it was the settlement's only cemetery for two centuries and grew through several additions between 1694 and 1820. A concrete wall now encloses it, while earlier gates carry bronze tablets placed by the city in 1883. Paths laid out in 1834 divided the grounds into twenty-four sections, and the maple clusters date from that work. About 1,200 markers survive, ranging from curved 17th-century slabs to slender neoclassical stones of the Revolutionary era and varied Victorian monuments. The earliest existing stone in Boston's ancient burying grounds, for Abel and Submite Clarke, is here. Burials include Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, the Reverend Richard Mather, and printer John Foster, along with forty unidentified soldiers who died during the Siege. The site was listed for its founding-era associations and its funerary art.