The Myles Standish Burial Ground (also known as Old Burying Ground or Standish Cemetery) in
Duxbury, Massachusetts
Duxbury (alternative older spelling: "Duxborough") is a historic seaside town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. A suburb located on the South Shore approximately to the southeast of Boston, the population was 16,090 at the 20 ...
is, according to the American Cemetery Association, the oldest maintained
cemetery
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...
in the United States.
The burying ground is the final resting place of several well-known
Pilgrims who arrived on the ''
Mayflower
''Mayflower'' was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, r ...
'' 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 gravesite. The Standish gravesite memorial is today the most prominent feature in the burying ground.
The burying ground is now owned and maintained by the Town of Duxbury. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
in 2015.
History
Original use
Duxbury was settled by inhabitants of
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony (sometimes Plimouth) was, from 1620 to 1691, the first permanent English colony in New England and the second permanent English colony in North America, after the Jamestown Colony. It was first settled by the passengers on the ...
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
Plymouth Bay is 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. Plymouth Bay retains historical significance for the landing at Plymouth Rock in ...
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.
![First Parish Church marker in Miles Standish Burying ground in Duxbury Massachusetts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/First_Parish_Church_marker_in_Miles_Standish_Burying_ground_in_Duxbury_Massachusetts.JPG)
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
A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a stele or marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. It is traditional for burials in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions, among others. In most cases, it has the deceased's name, da ...
in the cemetery is that of Captain Jonathan Alden, who died in 1697. He was the youngest child of ''Mayflower'' passengers
John Alden
John Alden (c. 1598 - September 12, 1687) was a crew member on the historic 1620 voyage of the ''Mayflower'' which brought the English settlers commonly known as Pilgrims to Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts, US. He was hired in Sou ...
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
Increase Mather (; June 21, 1639 Old Style – August 23, 1723 Old Style) was a New England Puritan clergyman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and president of Harvard College for twenty years (1681–1701). He was influential in the administ ...
, sent to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1691 to petition for a new charter for
Massachusetts Bay
Massachusetts Bay is a bay on the Gulf of Maine that forms part of the central coastline of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Description
The bay extends from Cape Ann on the north to Plymouth Harbor on the south, a distance of about . Its ...
and Plymouth Colonies. This effort resulted in the 1692 charter which established the
Province of Massachusetts Bay
The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in British America which became one of the thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III and Mary II, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of ...
, 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 , 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 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
Mayflower Cemetery is a town-owned cemetery in Duxbury, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. The first grave was of Stephen Russell in 1787 and the first engraved stone was of Ichabod Sampson in 1788. The Duxbury Crematory, also owned by the town, i ...
, was established next to the new meeting house on Tremont Street. Consequently, the Old Burying Ground fell out of use by 1789.
Neglect and rediscovery
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 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
''Th ...
'' by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely tran ...
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
The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society (DRHS) 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 own ...
), 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 gravesite
As interest in the Old Burying Ground increased during the late 19th century, visitors to Duxbury frequently inquired after the gravesite 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. 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
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. It was established in 1801 as part of the recent establishment of t ...
.
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.
[Pillsbury, 36]
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
John Alden (c. 1598 - September 12, 1687) was a crew member on the historic 1620 voyage of the ''Mayflower'' which brought the English settlers commonly known as Pilgrims to Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts, US. He was hired in Sou ...
, Mayflower Pilgrim
*
Priscilla Alden
Priscilla Alden (, ) was a noted member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims and the wife of fellow colonist John Alden (1687). They married in 1621 in Plymouth.
Biography
Priscilla was most likely born in Dorking in Surrey, the da ...
, Mayflower Pilgrim
*
George Soule, Mayflower Pilgrim
*
Myles Standish, Mayflower Pilgrim
*
Ichabod Wiswall, third minister of Duxbury church
See also
*
Burial Hill
Burial Hill is a historic cemetery or burying ground on School Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Established in the 17th century, it is the burial site of several Pilgrims, the founding settlers of Plymouth Colony. It was listed on the Nat ...
*
Cole's Hill
Cole's Hill is a National Historic Landmark containing the first cemetery used by the ''Mayflower'' Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. The hill is located on Carver Street near the foot of Leyden Street and across the street from Ply ...
*
Funerary art in Puritan New England
Funerary art in Puritan New England encompasses graveyard headstones carved between c. 1640 and the late 18th century by the Puritans, founders of the first American colonies, and their descendants. Early New England puritan funerary art conveys a ...
*
References
Images
File:Myles Standish's skull.jpg, Myles Standish's skull discovered in the Standish gravesite at Myles Standish Burial Ground during an investigation of the grave
File:Myles Standish Burial Ground.jpg, Myles Standish grave in 1914
File:Miles standish grave.JPG, Myles Standish grave
File:John Alden and Priscilla Alden grave in Miles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury MA.JPG, John Alden and Priscilla Alden graves
File:George Soule grave in the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury MA.JPG, George Soule grave
External links
*
{{coord, 42.02513, -70.68739, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:US-MA, display=title
Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Duxbury, Massachusetts
Cemeteries in Plymouth County, Massachusetts
1638 establishments in Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Plymouth County, Massachusetts
Burial places of Mayflower passengers