Myles Standish Burial Ground
Encyclopedia
The Myles Standish Burial Ground (also known as Old Burying Ground or Standish Cemetery) in Duxbury, Massachusetts is, according to the American Cemetery Association, the oldest maintained cemetery
in the United States.
The 1.5 acre (0.607029 ha) burying ground is the final resting place of several well-known Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower
in 1620, including Captain Myles Standish
. The site was the location of Duxbury's first meeting house
. It was in use from approximately 1638 until 1789 at which point the cemetery was abandoned. It was reclaimed in 1887 by the Duxbury Rural Society
, generating a widespread interest in locating the resting place of Duxbury's most famous colonist, Myles Standish. After two exhumations in 1889 and 1891, it was generally agreed that Standish's remains had been located and a memorial was built over his grave site. The Standish grave site memorial is today the most prominent feature in the burying ground.
The burying ground is now owned and maintained by the Town of Duxbury.
in 1627. In that year, the first land division was held and the shoreline of the present-day towns of Plymouth, Duxbury and Marshfield
was divided into farmsteads. The families who settled in Duxborough, as it was then called, petitioned in 1632 to be set off as a separate town. The petition was granted in 1637 and Duxbury was permitted to build its own meeting house. The meeting house was constructed on a knoll overlooking an inlet of Plymouth Bay
known as Morton's Hole. The small path that once ran alongside it is now a modern road known as Chestnut Street. The town's first burying ground was located adjacent to the original meeting house. A stone marker within the burying ground designates the approximate location of the first meeting house.
With the meeting house in place by 1638, the burying ground came into use shortly thereafter. The earliest graves were marked with simple fieldstones or wooden markers that have since deteriorated or vanished. It is believed that most of Duxbury's 17th century residents were interred within the burying ground, however, due to the lack of markers, their exact resting places are unknown. The oldest extant carved gravestone in the cemetery is that of Captain Jonathan Alden, who died in 1697. He was the youngest child of Mayflower passengers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins Alden.
The second oldest grave is that of Rev. Ichabod Wiswall
, who was the second pastor of the Duxbury church from 1676 until his death in 1700. Wiswall was part of a three man delegation, including Rev. Increase Mather
, sent to London
in 1691 to petition for a new charter for Massachusetts Bay
and Plymouth Colonies. This effort resulted in the 1692 charter which established the Province of Massachusetts Bay
, merging the two colonies.
In all, there are approximately 130 marked graves in the cemetery. Tradition suggests that there were once many more and, according to a 19th century Duxbury resident, it was once possible to "jump from stone to stone from one side of the graveyard to the other." With the disappearance of many stones, the existing markers are now sparsely scattered. The surviving gravestones date mostly from the 1760s and the 1770s. Only 34 stones pre-date 1750.
Around 1707, the Town constructed a second meeting house "three or four rods," about 50 foot, to the east of the original meeting house. A stone marker indicates the approximate location of the second meeting house which stood from c. 1707 to 1786 on a 0.5 acre (0.202343 ha) lot adjacent to the burying ground. In 2008, the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society undertook an archaeological dig, locating the remains of the second meeting house foundation. When the second meeting house became outdated, the town elected in 1785 to build a third meeting house in a location about 0.75 miles (1.21 km) from the Old Burying Ground. A new cemetery, now known as the Mayflower Cemetery, was established next to the new meeting house on Tremont Street. Consequently, the Old Burying Ground fell out of use by 1789.
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
in 1858, New Englanders began to take an increased interest in Pilgrim history. Duxbury, then suffering an economic slump after the loss of the shipbuilding industry, suddenly saw new business in the form of tourism. The Old Burying Ground became the focus of new attention in the late 19th century as the community sought to explore and reclaim its colonial past.
In 1887, the Duxbury Rural Society (now the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society
), which had been established a few years earlier to improve and beautify the town, embarked on a major project of reclaiming the Old Burying Ground. Brush was removed, gravestones repaired and a fence built around the cemetery to ward off cattle. The burying ground has been maintained as a local historic site ever since.
In 1890, Rev. Eugene J.V. Huiginn came to Duxbury as a new minister of the local Episcopal Church
. An avid antiquarian
, Huiginn was fascinated by Pilgrim history and disappointed to find that the graves of the earliest settlers could not be decisively located. He came to the conclusion that the 1889 exhumation had not adequately investigated the site and should have opened more graves. Huiginn obtained permission from the Town of Duxbury to open the graves again and, on April 25 and May 12, 1891, Huiginn and a small team excavated two different portions of the purported Standish burial plot.
In the course of the 1891 investigation, the graves of four individuals were uncovered: an elderly man alleged by Huiginn to be Myles Standish, two adult women alleged to be Lora Standish (Myles Standish's daughter) and Mary Dingley Standish (Myles Standish's daughter-in-law), and a boy conjectured to be either Charles or John Standish (Myles Standish's sons) who both died young. A physician, Dr. Wilfred G. Brown of Duxbury, was present and was able to identify the gender and age at death of the subjects. These apparent ages were consistent with the historical death records of the above mentioned members of the Standish family. These consistencies were Huiginn's primary evidence in identifying the remains of Myles Standish. Other evidence included the burial of the elderly male between the two women, consistent with the fact that Standish, in his will, requested to be buried between his daughter and daughter-in-law. Measurements and photographs were taken of the remains and Myles Standish was re-interred in a new pine coffin.
Huiginn led an effort, following this project, to have a substantial memorial placed over the Standish family plot. Constructed in 1893, the memorial is built around the two, small pyramidal stones which originally marked the plot and consists of a castellated stone wall with cannons mounted on each corner. Three large boulders bear the names of Myles Standish, Lora Standish and Mary Dingley Standish. The cannons, dating to 1853, were purchased from the Boston Navy Yard
.
There would be a third exhumation of the remains of Myles Standish. Some of his descendants, unhappy with the fact that Standish had been re-interred in a pine coffin, requested the construction of a vault beneath the memorial to better preserve their ancestor's remains. In 1931, they were granted permission by the Town to excavate the site. On this occasion there was a very large crowd present. Standish's remains were placed in a copper box, which in turn was placed in a cement chamber beneath the memorial. A copper tube containing time capsule material was also placed within the chamber.
Descendants of George Soule, another passenger of the Mayflower, placed a marker in 1971 at the supposed location of Soule's grave, near other Soule family markers.
In 1977, the American Cemetery Association placed a plaque at the entrance to the burying ground proclaiming it, "The Oldest Maintained Cemetery in the United States."
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
in the United States.
The 1.5 acre (0.607029 ha) burying ground is the final resting place of several well-known Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower
Mayflower
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...
in 1620, including Captain Myles Standish
Myles Standish
Myles Standish was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for Plymouth Colony. One of the Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the administration and defense of Plymouth Colony from its inception...
. The site was the location of Duxbury's first meeting house
Meeting house
A meeting house describes a building where a public meeting takes place. This includes secular buildings which function like a town or city hall, and buildings used for religious meetings, particularly of some non-conformist Christian denominations....
. It was in use from approximately 1638 until 1789 at which point the cemetery was abandoned. It was reclaimed in 1887 by the Duxbury Rural Society
Duxbury Rural and Historical Society
The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society is a non-profit organization in Duxbury, Massachusetts founded in 1883. Its mission is to "preserve and promote the heritage and rural character of the town of Duxbury and its environs." The DRHS owns several historic buildings, operates a library and...
, generating a widespread interest in locating the resting place of Duxbury's most famous colonist, Myles Standish. After two exhumations in 1889 and 1891, it was generally agreed that Standish's remains had been located and a memorial was built over his grave site. The Standish grave site memorial is today the most prominent feature in the burying ground.
The burying ground is now owned and maintained by the Town of Duxbury.
Original Use
Duxbury was settled by inhabitants of Plymouth ColonyPlymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
in 1627. In that year, the first land division was held and the shoreline of the present-day towns of Plymouth, Duxbury and Marshfield
Marshfield, Massachusetts
Marshfield is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on Massachusetts's South Shore. The population was 25,132 at the 2010 census.See also: Green Harbor, Marshfield , Rexhame, Marshfield Hills, and Ocean Bluff and Brant Rock....
was divided into farmsteads. The families who settled in Duxborough, as it was then called, petitioned in 1632 to be set off as a separate town. The petition was granted in 1637 and Duxbury was permitted to build its own meeting house. The meeting house was constructed on a knoll overlooking an inlet of Plymouth Bay
Plymouth Bay
Plymouth Bay is the name of a small, well-protected bay of the Atlantic Ocean on the western shore of larger Cape Cod Bay along the coastline of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
known as Morton's Hole. The small path that once ran alongside it is now a modern road known as Chestnut Street. The town's first burying ground was located adjacent to the original meeting house. A stone marker within the burying ground designates the approximate location of the first meeting house.
With the meeting house in place by 1638, the burying ground came into use shortly thereafter. The earliest graves were marked with simple fieldstones or wooden markers that have since deteriorated or vanished. It is believed that most of Duxbury's 17th century residents were interred within the burying ground, however, due to the lack of markers, their exact resting places are unknown. The oldest extant carved gravestone in the cemetery is that of Captain Jonathan Alden, who died in 1697. He was the youngest child of Mayflower passengers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins Alden.
The second oldest grave is that of Rev. Ichabod Wiswall
Ichabod Wiswall
Reverend Ichabod Wiswall was the third pastor of the church in Duxbury, Plymouth Colony, British America. Though he is thought to have given the first known funeral sermon in British America at the burial of Capt...
, who was the second pastor of the Duxbury church from 1676 until his death in 1700. Wiswall was part of a three man delegation, including Rev. Increase Mather
Increase Mather
Increase Mather was a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay . He was a Puritan minister who was involved with the government of the colony, the administration of Harvard College, and most notoriously, the Salem witch trials...
, sent to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1691 to petition for a new charter for Massachusetts Bay
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
and Plymouth Colonies. This effort resulted in the 1692 charter which established the Province of Massachusetts Bay
Province of Massachusetts Bay
The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony in North America. It was chartered on October 7, 1691 by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England and Scotland...
, merging the two colonies.
In all, there are approximately 130 marked graves in the cemetery. Tradition suggests that there were once many more and, according to a 19th century Duxbury resident, it was once possible to "jump from stone to stone from one side of the graveyard to the other." With the disappearance of many stones, the existing markers are now sparsely scattered. The surviving gravestones date mostly from the 1760s and the 1770s. Only 34 stones pre-date 1750.
Around 1707, the Town constructed a second meeting house "three or four rods," about 50 foot, to the east of the original meeting house. A stone marker indicates the approximate location of the second meeting house which stood from c. 1707 to 1786 on a 0.5 acre (0.202343 ha) lot adjacent to the burying ground. In 2008, the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society undertook an archaeological dig, locating the remains of the second meeting house foundation. When the second meeting house became outdated, the town elected in 1785 to build a third meeting house in a location about 0.75 miles (1.21 km) from the Old Burying Ground. A new cemetery, now known as the Mayflower Cemetery, was established next to the new meeting house on Tremont Street. Consequently, the Old Burying Ground fell out of use by 1789.
Neglect and Re-Discovery
In time, the original burying ground of Duxbury's first settlers became overgrown and all but forgotten. Cattle strayed over the burying ground and thick brush obscured many of the markers for most of the 19th century. With the publication of The Courtship of Miles StandishThe Courtship of Miles Standish
The Courtship of Miles Standish is an 1858 narrative poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about the early days of Plymouth Colony, the colonial settlement established in America by the Mayflower Pilgrims.-Overview:...
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
in 1858, New Englanders began to take an increased interest in Pilgrim history. Duxbury, then suffering an economic slump after the loss of the shipbuilding industry, suddenly saw new business in the form of tourism. The Old Burying Ground became the focus of new attention in the late 19th century as the community sought to explore and reclaim its colonial past.
In 1887, the Duxbury Rural Society (now the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society
Duxbury Rural and Historical Society
The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society is a non-profit organization in Duxbury, Massachusetts founded in 1883. Its mission is to "preserve and promote the heritage and rural character of the town of Duxbury and its environs." The DRHS owns several historic buildings, operates a library and...
), which had been established a few years earlier to improve and beautify the town, embarked on a major project of reclaiming the Old Burying Ground. Brush was removed, gravestones repaired and a fence built around the cemetery to ward off cattle. The burying ground has been maintained as a local historic site ever since.
Myles Standish Grave Site
As interest in the Old Burying Ground increased during the late 19th century, visitors to Duxbury frequently inquired after the grave site of Captain Myles Standish, leader of the Pilgrim militia and one of the first settlers of Duxbury. In the 1880s, there was considerable debate as to the final resting place of Capt. Standish. After much research, it was generally agreed that Standish was buried beneath two pyramidal fieldstones in the center of the Old Burying Ground. To determine for certain whether the strange stones in fact marked the Standish family plot, the Duxbury Rural Society decided to exhume the graves beneath the stones in 1889. The project was controversial and proceeded only after lengthy debate. In the course of the exhumation, the skeleton of an elderly male and a young woman were discovered. A newspaper reporter present for the exhumation wrote that, "nothing definite came of the effort" and the remains were re-interred.In 1890, Rev. Eugene J.V. Huiginn came to Duxbury as a new minister of the local Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
. An avid antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
, Huiginn was fascinated by Pilgrim history and disappointed to find that the graves of the earliest settlers could not be decisively located. He came to the conclusion that the 1889 exhumation had not adequately investigated the site and should have opened more graves. Huiginn obtained permission from the Town of Duxbury to open the graves again and, on April 25 and May 12, 1891, Huiginn and a small team excavated two different portions of the purported Standish burial plot.
In the course of the 1891 investigation, the graves of four individuals were uncovered: an elderly man alleged by Huiginn to be Myles Standish, two adult women alleged to be Lora Standish (Myles Standish's daughter) and Mary Dingley Standish (Myles Standish's daughter-in-law), and a boy conjectured to be either Charles or John Standish (Myles Standish's sons) who both died young. A physician, Dr. Wilfred G. Brown of Duxbury, was present and was able to identify the gender and age at death of the subjects. These apparent ages were consistent with the historical death records of the above mentioned members of the Standish family. These consistencies were Huiginn's primary evidence in identifying the remains of Myles Standish. Other evidence included the burial of the elderly male between the two women, consistent with the fact that Standish, in his will, requested to be buried between his daughter and daughter-in-law. Measurements and photographs were taken of the remains and Myles Standish was re-interred in a new pine coffin.
Huiginn led an effort, following this project, to have a substantial memorial placed over the Standish family plot. Constructed in 1893, the memorial is built around the two, small pyramidal stones which originally marked the plot and consists of a castellated stone wall with cannons mounted on each corner. Three large boulders bear the names of Myles Standish, Lora Standish and Mary Dingley Standish. The cannons, dating to 1853, were purchased from the Boston Navy Yard
Boston Navy Yard
The Boston Navy Yard, originally called the Charlestown Navy Yard and later Boston Naval Shipyard, was one of the oldest shipbuilding facilities in the United States Navy. Established in 1801, it was officially closed as an active naval installation on July 1, 1974, and the property was...
.
There would be a third exhumation of the remains of Myles Standish. Some of his descendants, unhappy with the fact that Standish had been re-interred in a pine coffin, requested the construction of a vault beneath the memorial to better preserve their ancestor's remains. In 1931, they were granted permission by the Town to excavate the site. On this occasion there was a very large crowd present. Standish's remains were placed in a copper box, which in turn was placed in a cement chamber beneath the memorial. A copper tube containing time capsule material was also placed within the chamber.
20th Century Markers
In 1930, the Alden Kindred of America, a non-profit organization composed of descendants of John and Priscilla Alden, placed slate gravestones to mark the approximate location of the resting places of John Alden, who died in 1687, and Priscilla Mullins Alden, who died around 1680. The markers were erected close to other Alden family stones, including that of their son Jonathan Alden, presuming that John and Priscilla were buried nearby.Descendants of George Soule, another passenger of the Mayflower, placed a marker in 1971 at the supposed location of Soule's grave, near other Soule family markers.
In 1977, the American Cemetery Association placed a plaque at the entrance to the burying ground proclaiming it, "The Oldest Maintained Cemetery in the United States."
Notable burials
- John Alden, Pilgrim
- Priscilla AldenPriscilla AldenPriscilla Alden , , noted member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims, was the wife of fellow colonist John Alden . They married in 1623 in Plymouth.-Biography:...
, Pilgrim - George SouleGeorge SouleGeorge Soule was a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and one of the original 102 Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.-Biography:...
, Pilgrim - Myles StandishMyles StandishMyles Standish was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for Plymouth Colony. One of the Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the administration and defense of Plymouth Colony from its inception...
, Pilgrim - Ichabod WiswallIchabod WiswallReverend Ichabod Wiswall was the third pastor of the church in Duxbury, Plymouth Colony, British America. Though he is thought to have given the first known funeral sermon in British America at the burial of Capt...
, third minister of Duxbury church