Historic cemetery in Massachusetts, United States
United States historic place
Forest Hills Cemetery
Forest Hills Cemetery entrance in August 2007
Location 95 Forest Hills Ave.Boston , Massachusetts , U.S. Area 250 acres (100 ha) Built 1848 (1848 ) Architect Billings, Hammatt; et al. Architectural style Colonial and Gothic Revival NRHP reference No. 04001219 [ 1] Added to NRHP November 17, 2004
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.
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.
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 ]
Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor , a monument to Martin Milmore , built by Daniel Chester French between 1889 and 1893
Firemen's Memorial
Gateway and Bell Tower
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
Serge Chaloff , swing and bebop saxophonist
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
Sarah Howe , fraudster of the 1870s and 1880s, notably via Ladies' Deposit Company of Boston[ 7]
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[ 8]
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[ 9]
Anne Sexton , poet
Frank Henry Shapleigh , painter[ 10]
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 [ 11]
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 [ 12]
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 .[ 13]
^ "National Register Information System" . National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . July 9, 2010.
^ "Forest Hills Cemetery" . National Park Service . Retrieved 28 January 2023 .
^ Augustus Charles Thompson, Nathaniel George Clark (1880). Discourse commemorative of Rev. Rufus Anderson: D.D., LL.D. American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions .
^ The American renaissance in New England (Third series ed.). Detroit: Gale Group. 2001. p. 32.
^ Fletcher, Ron (2005-02-25). "Who's buried in Dawes's tomb?" . Boston Globe.
^ John H. Eicher; David J. Eicher (2001). Civil War high commands . Stanford University Press . p. 220. ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1 .
^ "Mrs. Howe Buried" . The Boston Globe . January 29, 1892. p. 8. Retrieved November 20, 2024 – via newspapers.com.
^ "Life's Work Ended. – Funeral of Albert Winslow Nickerson at Dedham" . The Boston Globe . May 21, 1893. p. 5. Retrieved February 14, 2021 – via Newspapers.com .
^ "Ranney, Ambrose Arnold" . Biographical Directory of the United States Congress . Retrieved 2022-10-07 .
^ "Frank Henry Shapleigh (1842-1906)" . White Mountain Art & Artists . Retrieved 2024-11-11 .
^ "Obituary Notes" (PDF) . The New York Times . 23 June 1885. Retrieved 21 May 2017 .
^ "Early Families of Roxbury, Massachusetts genealogy project" . geni_family_tree . Retrieved 2019-10-14 .
^ [1] CWGC Cemetery Report, details obtained from casualty record.
42°17′42″N 71°06′22″W / 42.295°N 71.106°W / 42.295; -71.106
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