Forest Hills Cemetery is a historic 275-acre (111.3Â ha) cemetery, greenspace, arboretum and sculpture garden located in the Forest Hills section of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The cemetery was established in 1848 as a public municipal cemetery of the town of Roxbury, but was privatized when Roxbury was annexed to Boston.
Overview
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 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 (29 ha) at a cost of $27,894. The area was later increased to 225 acres (91.1 ha). 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
- Harrison Henry Atwood, US House of Representatives (1895-1897), Architect of Boston
- Rufus Anderson, missionary and author
- 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 (1921â€"1925)
- E. E. Cummings, poet and artist
- Fanny Davenport, actress
- William Dawes (possible), tanner and American colonial minuteman
- William Dwight (1831â€"1888), general in American Civil War
- Eugene N. Foss, Governor of Massachusetts (1911â€"1914)
- William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist
- William Gaston, Governor of Massachusetts (1875â€"1876)
- Kahlil Gibran (1922â€"2008), Sculptor
- Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836â€"1895), preacher, writer, composer, and founder of Gordon College
- Curtis Guild, Governor of Massachusetts (1906â€"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 William Torrey, merchant, founder of the American colony of "Ellena" in Borneo
- Joseph Warren, physician and patriot, killed at Battle of Bunker Hill
- Mary Evans Wilson, civil rights activist
- 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.
Gallery
See also
- List of cemeteries in Boston, Massachusetts
- National Register of Historic Places listings in southern Boston, Massachusetts
References
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