Welcome to King’s Chapel Burying Ground

King’s Chapel Burying Ground is Boston’s oldest burying ground, established in 1630 on what were then the outskirts of the new Puritan settlement. It was first called “the burying place” and later “the old burying place,” then after 1760 began to be called “the Chapel Burying Ground” after neighboring King’s Chapel, although it has never been affiliated with that or any church. Many notable figures in Boston’s early history are buried here, from first governor John Winthrop to Frederic Tudor, the “Ice King.” Those buried in the first thirty years were predominantly English-born immigrants who came to the “New World” seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. Today approximately 600 gravestones and 29 tabletop tombs remain to mark more than 1,000 burials in this small space. Although town selectmen barred burials here after additional burying grounds opened after 1660, the city’s rapid population growth led to continued burials until around 1896. The burying ground was first fenced in 1642, with new fences built as boundaries changed over the next two centuries, and the current fence along Tremont Street was built in 1854. In 1896, when Boston’s subway system became the first in the country, a subway ventilation shaft was built in the southwest corner and human remains from disturbed graves were reburied elsewhere in the burying ground. Among its most famous gravestones is that of Joseph Tapping, who died in 1678 at age 23; created by the unnamed “Charlestown Stonecutter,” it is renowned for elaborate carvings symbolizing the soul leaving the body, time running out, Death ending life, and Time attempting to stop Death, while its Latin inscriptions refer to the swift passage of time and the inevitability of death. Nearby are the grave of his father John Tapping, a felt maker, and the double tombstone of his mother Mary Tapping Avery, believed to have been Boston’s first female bookseller, and her second husband William Avery. Tomb 11 near the Tremont Street fence holds John Welch, who is said to have carved the current wooden “Sacred Cod” in 1784 for merchant John Rowe after earlier versions at the Old State House had been destroyed. In 1686 Edmund Andros, appointed governor of New England by King James II, built an Anglican church on land in the back corner of the burying ground after failing to find anyone willing to sell him land, disturbing graves and angering colonists who had come to Boston to escape Anglican influence; the church was consecrated in 1688 as King’s Chapel, and during the 18th century it was rebuilt and expanded, disturbing more early graves.

Cambridge, Massachusetts · United States