Granary Burying Ground: Resting Place of Patriots
Why is it significant?
Look across through the heavy iron gate at the weathered slate headstones jutting from the shaded turf of the Granary Burying Ground. Step past the Egyptian Revival gateway and you find yourself in the quiet company of the American Revolution's greatest firebrands.
Key Facts
| Place | Granary Burying Ground: Resting Place of Patriots |
|---|---|
| Address | Tremont St, Boston, MA 02108 |
| Geo Coordinates | 42.35780, -71.06170 |
| Part of Walk | The Freedom Trail: Rebels, Tea & Revolution |
| Generated | Generated |
Look across through the heavy iron gate at the weathered slate headstones jutting from the shaded turf of the Granary Burying Ground. Step past the Egyptian Revival gateway and you find yourself in the quiet company of the American Revolution's greatest firebrands. Established in sixteen sixty on land carved from the town pasture, this small two-acre cemetery holds an astonishing five thousand Bostonians, even though only about twenty-three hundred headstones survive today.
How did so many bodies fit into this modest churchyard? The answer is sobering: graves were dug four and five layers deep, and nineteenth-century municipal caretakers straightened the headstones into tidy rows to make room for lawnmowers, creating a puzzle that modern historians still struggle to untangle.
Walk toward the center and you will see the towering twenty-five-foot granite obelisk honoring the parents of Benjamin Franklin, who was born just down the street on Milk Street. Just to the left lies Samuel Adams, the fierce political organizer and brewer who pushed the colonies toward open break with the Crown. A few steps farther rests John Hancock, wealthiest merchant in New England and first signer of the Declaration of Independence, who signed his name with such sweeping flair that King George could read it without spectacles.
Near the back wall lies the humble tomb of Paul Revere, marked by a modest rounded slate and a newer granite marker. And right beside the pathway rests a somber slab marking the five victims of the Boston Massacre of March seventeen seventy, including Crispus Attucks. Towering above the cemetery stands Park Street Church, completed in eighteen zero-nine, with its two-hundred-and-seventeen-foot steeple. In that very church, on July fourth, eighteen twenty-nine, William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first major public address demanding the immediate abolition of slavery, cementing Boston's legacy as the conscience of a new nation.