Copp's Hill Burying Ground

In the 1630s, the northern-most slope of the Shawmut Peninsula, or Boston, was a prominent landmark with a strategic overlook of the harbor and the Charles River to the west, and settlers found the steep hillock well protected from the “three great annoyances, of Woolves, Rattle-snakes and Musketos.” They first built a wind-powered grinding mill there and called the slope Windmill Hill. Later it was known as Snowhill and finally Copp's Hill, named for William Copp, a cobbler who once owned the land. The gravestones of his children, buried in the 1660s, still stand at the hill's crest. Other settlers were buried nearby after the town bought the site in 1659 and called it the North Burying Ground. Over the years, three sections were added to the original, though today they appear as one. During the occupation of Boston, British troops manned a battery at Copp's Hill and rained fire onto nearby Charlestown during the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States