sweet auburn | 2021 volume ii
Joseph Story
( 1779 – 1845 ) President 1831 – 1845 / Trustee 1831 – 1845 Lot 313 Narcissus Path
Joseph Story grew up in Marblehead , Massachusetts , and graduated from Harvard College in 1798 . He practiced law in Salem , served in the U . S . House of Representatives , and taught law at Harvard . At thirty-two he became the youngest member elected to the U . S . Supreme Court , where he earned renown as a constitutional scholar .
As a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society ( MHS ) Garden and Cemetery Committee , Story helped organize the purchase of seventy-two acres of land bordering on Cambridge and Watertown for the new rural cemetery . He worked on committees to erect a chapel and to establish Cemetery bylaws and regulations concerning visitors and interments . At the public ceremony to consecrate Mount Auburn on September 24 , 1831 , more than 2,000 people came to hear Story deliver his stirring consecration address in the natural amphitheater of the Dell , today known as Consecration Dell .
Jacob Bigelow
( 1787 – 1879 ) President 1845 – 1871 / Trustee 1831 – 1879 Lot 116 Beech Avenue
Jacob Bigelow ’ s wide interests in medicine , botany , and architecture figured prominently in his work as founder , designer , and president of Mount Auburn Cemetery . Born in Sudbury , Massachusetts , where he spent his early years on his family ’ s farm , Bigelow received an A . B . from Harvard in 1806 and an M . D . from the University of Pennsylvania in 1810 . He practiced medicine in Boston and held a professorship at the Harvard Medical College . His publications Florula Bostoniensis ( 1814 ) and the three volume American Medical Botany ( 1817 – 20 ) greatly contributed to the fledging discipline of botany .
In 1825 , Bigelow helped generate interest in finding a new burial site outside of Boston proper . He worked with engineer Henry A . S . Dearborn on the design of the site , in which memorials were set amid nature and scenic vistas of ponds , hills , trees , and flowers . Bigelow assigned botanical names to the Cemetery ’ s winding avenues and paths . In his decades as trustee and Mount Auburn ’ s second president , he designed the Cemetery ’ s principal architectural landmarks : the Egyptian Revival Gateway , the Chapel ( later named in his honor ), Washington Tower , and the Sphinx .
John Tisdale Bradlee
( 1837 – 1908 ) President 1871 – 1874 / Trustee 1870 – 1877 Lot 2269 Lime Avenue
A successful dry goods merchant and import agent , John Bradlee contributed in many ways to the business and civic life of Boston . He was a founding member of the Museum of Fine Arts , a trustee of the City Hospital and Public Library , and president of the Corporation of the Home for Aged Men . He helped to ensure the proper burial of soldiers who died at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 .
Bradlee served as Cemetery trustee and president at a time when Mount Auburn was experiencing tremendous growth . A number of iron fences around family lots were removed , while ornamental granite curbing around lots and ponds proliferated . Bradlee ’ s tenure marked a change in leadership as twelve new trustees joined the board in the early 1870s . During this transition , Mount Auburn developed new areas of the Cemetery and undertook a major reassessment of its finances and policies .
Israel Munson Spelman
( 1816 – 1907 ) President 1874 – 1905 / Trustee 1874 – 1905 Lot 1346 Olive Path
After graduating from Harvard with a degree in civil engineering when he was twenty years old , Israel Spelman pursued a career in railroads . He became a director of the Boston and Maine Railroad , where he also served as president , and a trustee for the Sandusky , Dayton , and Cincinnati Railroad Company . In the 1880s , he managed the Cambridge Railroad Company . He was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers for more than two decades .
During Spelman ’ s thirty-one-year tenure as president and trustee of Mount Auburn , the Cemetery developed new areas that reflected a more unified , open style known as the landscape lawn plan . He oversaw construction of a new administration building and chapel from 1896 to 1898 , designed by Willard T . Sears and later named Story Chapel . Spelman was an early advocate of cremation , and in 1899 the Cemetery added crematory retorts ( furnaces ) and a columbarium for cremated remains to Bigelow Chapel .
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