Cemeteries in Ipswich, MA

During my trips to the North Shore earlier this year, I twice visited a group of cemeteries in Ipswich, MA. This cemetery opened in 1634, a year after the town was founded in 1633, and is operational to this day. The oldest parts of the cemetery, located near High Street where on-street parking is available, is called Old Burying Ground or Old North Cemetery, while other sections were Highland and New Highland Cemetery. This entire area is part of High Street Historic District, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980. Like the High Street of many post-medieval towns (as last described in my Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical essay “Places: Bywater”, which referenced the original Ipswich in England) this was the main road until Central Street was built in 1871, or 238 years after High Street.

The entire cemetery is a quiet and relaxing walk, although be warned that visitors must take a flight of 83 steps (yes, we counted) to get from the lower Old Burying Ground to the higher Highland & New Highland cemeteries, hence their names. For those only interested in the oldest gravestones, plenty of unique designs are in the lower cemetery, so no steps are required. Additionally, since the cemetery has been active throughout the period of European settlement in Massachusetts, gravestone enthusiasts can find a marker for nearly every period of American history. The oldest marker I found, albeit without looking very hard, belonged to Mrs. Lydia Pingry Burley, who died in 1736 at age 39, which was about a hundred years after the cemetery opened. The marker includes a skull with angel wings and a crossbone over the skull instead of under.

A relatively more modern stone belonging to Doctor Joseph Manning and his wife Elisabeth/Elizabeth Boardman Manning. The gravestone dates from 1784 and includes neoclassical elements such as a pair of carved pillars holding up a frieze. The head with angel wings is babyish instead of a skull. The couple apparently had a long marriage, although it was the second for Joseph. His first wife and Elisabeth’s cousin, Priscilla Boardman Manning, had died giving birth to their second child in 1730 at age 23. My final fact was that Joseph was a twin; his older brother was John, and they were born in 1703. Their birth seemingly shocked their parents, Thomas Manning and Mary Giddings Manning, enough to stop having children, as the couple was 39 and 34 at the time and “only” had five surviving children including the twins.

Near the top of the stairs, I found a marker for Col. Luther Caldwell, a Civil War veteran, along with his wives Almira Flint Caldwell and S. Maria Newhall Caldwell. Besides his pride of serving the Grand Old Republic, he had an extensive political and writing career, including participating in the Republican conventions that chose Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1868, being elected Mayor of Elmira, NY in 1873, working for President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1893, and publishing The Life of Anne Bradstreet (also known as An Account of Anne Bradstreet, the Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics) in 1898. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of the marker was that Caldwell erected the stone in 1902, the year before his death in 1903, perhaps to guarantee he was remembered exactly how he wanted.

When I took a guided tour focused on important stops in colonial religious history, we paused at the grave of Reverend Nathaniel Rogers, incorrectly listed on Find a Grave as being buried in Highland Cemetery instead of Old Burying Ground. The gravestone includes a carving that is supposed to be in his likeness. He moved from Haverhill, England to Massachusetts Bay Colony and became the minister in Ipswich, MA from 1638 to his death in 1655. At this site, the tour guide read poetry by Anne Dudley Bradstreet, a highly educated Puritan woman who described daily life in the colonies and her Christian faith. She lived only a few years in Ipswich, as her politically active and equally educated husband Simon Bradstreet often moved his family before settling in North Andover. While seemingly in disagreement over moving, the pair clearly loved each other according to Anne’s poems, and they ultimately had eight children.