Forest Hills Cemetery

Forest Hills Cemetery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Forest Hills Cemetery entrance
Location	95 Forest Hills Ave., Boston, Massachusetts
Area	250 acres (100 ha)
Built	1848
Architectural style	Colonial, Gothic Revival
NRHP Reference #	04001219[1]
Added to NRHP	November 17, 2004

Forest Hills Cemetery is a historic 275-acre (1.1 km²) cemetery, greenspace, arboretum and sculpture garden located in the Forest Hills section of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The cemetery was designed in 1848.

Overview

The cemetery has a number of interesting or impressive monuments, including some by famous sculptors. Among these are Daniel Chester French's Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor and John Wilson's Firemen's Memorial. Forest Hills Cemetery is an active cemetery where interments take place on most days of the year.

History

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 the Mount Auburn Cemetery, Forest Hills Cemetery was designed by Alexander Dearborn to provide a park-like setting to bury and remember family and friends. In the year the cemetery was established, another 14½ acres were purchased from John Parkinson. This made for a little more than 71 acres (290,000 m²) at a cost of $27,894. The area was later increased to 225 acres (0.9 km²). 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 persons interred at Forest Hills

Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor (Martin Milmore Monument), by Daniel Chester French (1889-93).

Firemen's Memorial.

Gateway and Bell Tower.

• Harrison Henry Atwood, US House of Representatives (1895-1897), Architect of Boston
• Rufus Anderson, missionary and author^[2]
• Hugh Bancroft, president of The Wall Street Journal
• Clarence W. Barron, president of Dow Jones & Company
• Amy Beach, composer and pianist
• Andrew Carney, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
• James Freeman Clarke, author
• Channing H. Cox, Governor of Massachusetts (1921–1925)
• E. E. Cummings, poet and artist
• Fanny Davenport, actress
• William Dawes (possible^[3]), tanner and American colonial minuteman
• William Dwight (1831–1888), general in American Civil War^[4]
• Eugene N. Foss, Governor of Massachusetts (1911–1914)
• William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist
• William Gaston, Governor of Massachusetts (1875–1876)
• Kahlil Gibran (1922–2008), Sculptor
• Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836–1895), preacher, writer, composer, and founder of Gordon College
• Curtis Guild, Governor of Massachusetts (1906–1909)
• Edward Everett Hale, author
• William Heath, general in American Revolutionary War
• Karl Heinzen, author
• Rev. Edgar J. Helms, Founder of Goodwill Industries
• Charles Hiller Innes, Massachusetts Politician
• Faik Konica, Albanian thinker, writer, journalist, politician
• Isaac Newton Lewis, "Author, Inventor and Friend of Man"
• Reggie Lewis, basketball player for Boston Celtics
• Francis Cabot Lowell, after whom Lowell, Massachusetts is named
• John Lowell, 18th century federal judge
• John Lowell, 19th century federal judge
• Martin Milmore, sculptor
• Carlotta Monterey, actor and wife of Eugene O'Neill
• Theofan S. Noli, Bishop, Prime Minister of Albania
• Eugene O'Neill, playwright
• Anne Sexton, poet
• Pauline Agassiz Shaw, reformer and philanthropist
• Lysander Spooner, early American abolitionist, writer, anarchist
• Lucy Stone, suffragist
• Joseph Warren, physician and patriot, killed at Battle of Bunker Hill
• John A. Winslow, admiral in American Civil War
• Jacob Wirth, restaurateur
• Two British war graves, of a Royal Field Artillery soldier of World War I and a Merchant Navy sailor of World War II.^[5]

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  William Lloyd Garrison grave.

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  Eugene O'Neill grave.

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  E. E. Cummings grave.

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  Anne Sexton grave.

Gallery

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  Large Weeping European Beech inside Forest Hills Cemetery

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  Copper European Beech by the pond

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See also

• List of cemeteries in Boston, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Boston, Massachusetts

References

1. National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
2. Augustus Charles Thompson, Nathaniel George Clark (1880). Discourse commemorative of Rev. Rufus Anderson: D.D., LL.D.,. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
3. Fletcher, Ron (2005-02-25). "Who's buried in Dawes's tomb?". Boston Globe.
4. John H. Eicher; David J. Eicher (2001). Civil War high commands. Stanford University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1.
5. CWGC Cemetery Report, details obtained from casualty record.

Further reading

• Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell, Forest Hills Cemetery, Arcadia Publishing, Images of America series, 2009

External links

• Forest Hills Cemetery official site
• Forest Hills Educational Trust
• Photos of Forest Hills Cemetery
• Heart of the City article and photos

Coordinates: 42°17′42″N 71°06′22″W / 42.295°N 71.106°W