Copps Hill: Old Boston Burying Ground
Inscriptions from City’s Second Oldest Cemetery
Aug 28, 2009 Rosemary E. Bachelor
“The venerable cemetery on Copp’s Hill is worthy of the researches of the antiquary, for there many of the fathers of New England were buried,” wrote lawyer John Sheppard in 1851.
Shawmut’s First Settlers Interred at Copp’s Hill
“Friend and foe, female loveliness and infantile beauty, here lie side by side; in a word, here is the dust of many a daring, lion-hearted, devout first settler in the town of Shawmut, now the expanding city of Boston,” Sheppard reported.
The Copp’s Hill inscriptions primarily pertain to persons born in the 1600s and 1700s. Some give only the barest essentials. Others contain a wealth of personal data. A few give family relationships.
Copp’s Hill: Final Resting Place of the Famous
Here are buried such renowned early settlers as the famous Mathers, Increase, Cotton and Samuel Mather. Others include colonial Boston commissioner and legislative representative Timothy Thornton (died in 1726 at age 79) and Moses Grant (died in 1777, age 70), a member of the famous Boston Tea Party.
Nearby is the grave of Capt. Thomas Lake, the proprietor of vast Maine and New Hampshire land holdings, who was slain by Indians in 1670.
Early Boston Cemetery Burials
The famous are surrounded by folks from every walk of life. Grace Berry died in 1625, age “about 58 Years”. Her gravestone is marked by bullets of a British soldier fired more than 150 years later when there was a Revolutionary War skirmish on top of Copp’s Hill. Jean Treuis/Trevis (died 1706 “aged near 100 years”) was the wife of Daniel; the gravestone is only 10” high, 8” wide and 6” thick. Betsey Darling (died in 1809, age 43) was the wife of David Darling and mother of 17 children…“around her lies 12 of them and two were lost at sea”. Also buried here is Mary “ye wife of Ceasor (sic) Augustus, servant of Mr. Robert Ball, aged 25 years died May 28th 1759.”
Book Gives Copp’s Hill Burial Ground Inscriptions
Thomas Bridgman’s 1851 book, Epitaphs from Copp’s Hill Buirial Ground, Boston, is devoted to facsimilies of the tombstone, but also includes a large appendix with historical and genealogical family notes, plus an index. This helpful book for family researchers was reprinted in 1989 in a 252-page illustrated paperback edition issued by Heritage Books, Bowie, MD. Used copies of this reprint, other reprints and the original book are usually available from online booksellers.
Source: Review copy of the 1989 reprint, plus promotional material made available by Heritage Books.
Copp's Hill Burial Ground, Boston
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