Yantic Cemetery, consecrated on July 12, 1844, was laid out on 26.5 acres overlooking the Yantic River as an outstanding Victorian-era Rural Cemetery, where winding cart paths, circular drives, memorials, plantings, fountains, artful monuments, and a picturesque landscape created a meditative and spiritual setting intended to lead mourners to contemplate Divine presence in nature. This park-like cemetery met Norwich's need for additional burial space as older graveyards became overcrowded and was open to all Norwich citizens regardless of religion, ethnicity, or socio-economic background. It contains memorials to many notable figures in Norwich history, including soldiers returned after the Civil War from Andersonville Prison at Camp Sumter in Georgia and buried largely in Soldiers' Circle or family plots; Sarah Larned Osgood, whose grave is marked by a cast-bronze mourning figure that was stolen in 2010, recovered, and restored in 2013; philanthropist Harriet Peck Williams; political leader Lafayette Sabine Foster, who as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate in 1865 stood next in line for the presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination and Andrew Johnson's succession; the free Black Ruggles family of Bean Hill, including abolitionist David Ruggles, who said he helped as many as 600 enslaved people escape, among them Frederick Douglass and James L. Smith; Connecticut Civil War governor William Alfred Buckingham, who quickly mustered Union troops, paid soldiers from his own pocket, and authorized the state's first Black regiment in 1863; and wealthy industrialist and philanthropist John Fox Slater, who gave $1 million in 1882 to support the education of emancipated slaves.