Boston's Revolutionary-Era Cemetery on the Freedom Trail
Tremont St, Boston, MA 02108
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter; daylight hours only.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved central path with uneven grass paths between rows
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1660 · Freedom Trail Site · Burial Place of Founding Fathers · Boston National Historical Park
The Granary Burying Ground was established in 1660 as the South Burying Ground when Boston's first cemetery proved insufficient for the growing town. The two-acre site occupies a portion of Tremont Street next to what would later become Park Street Church. The grounds took the name Granary Burying Ground in 1737 from the public granary that stood at the cemetery's northern edge before the church was built in 1809.
Estimates place the actual number of interments at more than 5,000, far exceeding the roughly 2,345 surviving stones — a result of stones being moved for landscaping in the nineteenth century, reuse of plots, and the practice of family-name markers covering multiple burials. The Granary became Boston's most architecturally significant Revolutionary-era cemetery because of who was buried there: three signers of the Declaration of Independence (John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine), Paul Revere, the five victims of the 1770 Boston Massacre (Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Patrick Carr, and Samuel Maverick), James Otis, Peter Faneuil, Boston's first mayor John Phillips, and the parents of Benjamin Franklin.
The cemetery sits on the Freedom Trail, the 2.5-mile heritage route established in 1951, and is one of seventeen sites on the trail. It is part of Boston National Historical Park and is administered by the City of Boston. With more than one million visitors annually, the Granary is among the most-visited historic cemeteries in the country.
Sources
The Granary does not have a single named resident ghost in the tradition of Boston's Boylston Street or USS Constitution stories. Instead, the cemetery functions as an atmospheric stop on the city's ghost-tour circuit, where guides discuss the violent end of several of its more famous inhabitants — Crispus Attucks shot at the Boston Massacre, James Otis killed by lightning, Samuel Gray dying within hours of the Massacre — and reports collected from visitors describe the standard repertoire of urban-cemetery experiences: cold spots near the Massacre victims' monument, sudden battery drain in cameras and phones near specific tombs, and figures in colonial dress glimpsed among the older slate stones at dusk.
The central column erected in the 1860s to honor the Franklin family is a frequent focus of these reports, as is the Boston Massacre monument added in 1888. Local tradition holds that the slate stones themselves — many bearing the death's-head, soul-effigy, and willow-and-urn motifs that mark eighteenth-century Boston carving traditions — contribute to the cemetery's atmospheric reputation independent of any specific account.
Walk among more than 2,300 surviving headstones, including the graves of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and Benjamin Franklin's parents Josiah and Abiah. The cemetery is a Freedom Trail stop and an active interpretive site of the City of Boston.
Most Boston Freedom Trail walking tours include the Granary as an interpretive stop, as do several commercial evening ghost tours operating along Tremont Street.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Cambridge, MA
The Old Burying Ground at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Garden Street was established in 1635 — one year before Harvard's founding — and was Cambridge's primary burial ground for nearly two centuries. It contains the graves of early Harvard presidents (including Henry Dunster, the first), Revolutionary War soldiers, and notable Cambridge colonists.
New Haven, CT
Grove Street Cemetery was organized in 1796 as the New Haven Burying Ground and incorporated in October 1797, the first chartered private nonprofit cemetery in the United States. Its 1845 Egyptian Revival brownstone gateway, designed by New Haven architect Henry Austin and carved by Hezekiah Augur, is a leading example of the style in America. The cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000.
Gettysburg, PA
Gettysburg National Cemetery — originally Soldiers' National Cemetery — was established in 1863 to bury Union dead from the July 1863 battle. Local attorney David Wills organized the effort; landscape architect William Saunders designed the radial layout. President Abraham Lincoln dedicated the cemetery on November 19, 1863, with the Gettysburg Address. The site is now managed by the National Park Service as part of Gettysburg National Military Park.