Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery, established in 1757 by the colonial Assembly, is one of North Carolina's oldest municipal cemeteries and the burial place of several people important to the state's history. The oldest section lies just north of the church buildings, where ground-penetrating radar revealed in 2016 that at least a hundred graves remain in what appears to be an empty field, their original markers having disappeared. Before 1800, the Hooper family set aside part of their adjoining property for burials, and other prominent families followed by purchasing plots from the Hoopers, creating nine brick-walled family plots that eventually defined the cemetery's southern boundary. The Hooper plot contains the grave of William Hooper, a Massachusetts-born lawyer who settled in North Carolina and later signed the Declaration of Independence, as well as the grave of James Hogg, a Scottish-born land speculator and supporter of establishing a state university, whose children took the surname Alves by act of the Assembly; Gavin Alves, one of his sons, is buried nearby. The cemetery's tallest stone, an obelisk, honors William Alexander Graham, who served as governor, United States senator, and vice-presidential candidate. Nearby is John Berry, the builder and architect credited with bringing brick buildings to Hillsborough and associated with many local churches, the 1823 Masonic Hall on West King Street, and the 1846 courthouse at Churton and King streets. Town clerk's minutes from 1854 suggest that free African Americans were also buried here. Wives were often memorialized with affectionate epitaphs, and children account for 27 percent of the 178 identified graves, reflecting high infant mortality in the 19th century. By 1871, little room remained for people without family plots, so land was bought for a new municipal cemetery in the northeast part of Hillsborough. In 1894, William Hooper's gravestone, and perhaps some of his remains, were moved to Greensboro's Guilford Court House Revolutionary War battle site and then returned to Hillsborough a few years later. Margaret Hooker Brown, as a child, chose a quartzite boulder for her own gravestone, and at least 23 gravestones in the cemetery bear the signatures of the craftsmen who carved them.