A Brief Visit to the North Burial Ground:

Providence's First Public Cemetery
by Gordon Dowsett
Photos by John Twomey

When John Twomey suggested that I write something about the North Burial Ground my initial reaction was "so what's to write about an old cemetery?" But I quickly realized that an old cemetery is in fact one of the most fascinating of subjects, because it is like a history book, with every old grave stone marking a separate page.

I am referring of course to the rather large and at the moment rather neglected looking cemetery that starts at the foot of Cypress Street, where North Main and Branch Avenue converge, and extends quite a distance North alongside North Main on one side and the frontage road to Highway 95 on the other, widening out into a great wedge of 110 acres.

Of course it was not always like this. At the turn of the 20th.Century it was one of Rhode Island’s greatest attractions, a beautifully landscaped garden of manicured lawns and flower beds, fountains, pond, and dozens of beautiful specimen trees, through which thousands of people wandered and picnicked every week-end. But now, a hundred years later, big expanses of those manicured lawns have been replaced by densely packed rows of slabs marking the graves of the men, most of them so young, who have fallen in all those wars between then and now - the First World War (To End All Wars), the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all the little wars and skirmishes in between - what a sad comment that is on human history! Many of those handsome trees are now dying or dead, and the pond with its fountain is no more. But it still nurses, along those neglected pathways, much of the history of Providence and Rhode Island.

Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, was buried there, and so was Stephen Hopkins, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. More recently Williams' remains were again removed and embedded, sealed in a metal box, at the foot of the monument in his honor that stands in the little parkbeside the new River Walk. However a six foot high obelisk, erected in honor of Stephen Hopkins, still stands over his grave just a few yards south of the office at the present entrance to the burial ground. I wonder what fascinating stories of his life and times some patient research might uncover.

North Burial Ground was not established until 1700, several years after Roger Williams established what was then still only a small town, on 45 acres of a larger tract that had been purchased from the local Indian tribe - an untidy area of swampy land, dotted with sand heaps deposited by the various arms of the river that meandered through it, that was used as a public grazing area and as the site for the stocks and whipping post in general use for punishment in those days. At first only 22 acres were actually developed as a burial ground, and was not much used at first because of the location. Nevertheless it gradually grew over the years until by the year 2000 it extended over 110 acres.

North Burial Ground in Winter

At first the burial ground was used mainly to re-inter remains from the numerous family plots that lay in the way of developers as the town steadily grew over the years. This was given an added impetus when it was decided to build a road, which we now know as Benefit Street, that would cut across dozens of estates, each with a very narrow frontage onto the eastern bank of the harbor, that extended to the top of what is now College Hill. This rather unusual form of subdivision had worked well enough when the town remained small and activity and communication were centered on the harbor, but had made communication between north and south progressively more difficult as the town had prospered and grown. But these properties had mostly been settled before any official burial ground had been established, and so each had its own family graveyard on the lower part of the estate. Some of these, or surviving portions of them, can still be found. In 1785 an Act was passed to facilitate the removal and reinterment of remains where graves were found to obstruct development. (this was followed in 1817 by a State Law providing for heavy penalties for the digging up of bodies or desecration of graves - apparently then, as now, there was always someone torecognize a good business opportunity when they saw one!)

The grave of Roger Williams was one of those, and in his recently published book "North Burial Ground", in which he attempts to identify all those buried in the original 22 acres, John Sterling tells an interesting, if macabre, little story.

It appears that when Roger Williams' grave was opened, a corner of his coffin was found to have been damaged, presumably by the diggers of a subsequent grave, allowing a root from an apple tree to penetrate the coffin. The enterprising root had flourished and grown in the newfound source of nourishment. It had completely encircled the head, then appeared to have proceeded down to the pelvis, where it had branched into two, each branch following one of the legs to the ankle, where - so the story goes - it had again changed direction to follow the foot. So, besides having founded the City of Providence, Roger Williams has the added distinction of being probably the only person of note who has left a permanent record of the position in which his body reclined in its coffin! ( John Sterling says the root was presented to the Rhode Island Historical Society, who have kept it in storage; so skeptics should have an opportunity to test the veracity of the story. The fate of the apple tree is unknown - presumably it died.)

North Burial Ground Pond after March Snow