Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn A Landscape of Lives | Page 22

Did you know...?

By Jennifer Johnston, Media & Communications Director

Myths abound about Mount Auburn Cemetery’ s history and the people buried here. Below is a list of a few myths that we hear about regularly from visitors. Did you know the following myths about Mount Auburn?

Only the well-to-do can be buried at Mount Auburn.

Mount Auburn is a chiefly an“ Old Boston” cemetery.

There is no longer burial space for purchase at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

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In fact, Mount Auburn is an active cemetery providing service and care to families of all beliefs.

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Writers William and Henry James are buried at Mount Auburn.

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American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James( 1842 – 1910) and his brother, novelist Henry James( 1843 – 1916), are buried at Cambridge Cemetery, just across Coolidge Avenue from Mount Auburn. x

American jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is buried at Mount Auburn.

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Holmes Jr. is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. However, his father, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., is buried on Lime Avenue at Mount Auburn. Holmes Sr. is recognized to this day for poems such as“ Old Ironsides.”

Mount Auburn is a public park.

Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed Mount Auburn Cemetery.

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Although Mount Auburn is open free of charge to the public 365 days a year, the Cemetery is in fact a private, non-profit institution designed and shaped by a group of visionary Bostonians. Frederick Law Olmsted would have been a young boy when physician and horticulturalist Jacob Bigelow( 1787 – 1879) designer Henry A. S. Dearborn( 1783 – 1851) and surveyor, and civil engineer Alexander Wadsworth( 1806 – 1898) collaborated on the design of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

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The film The Thomas Crown Affair had a scene of a money drop that was filmed at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

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The 1968 film— starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway— was filmed primarily on location in and around Boston at historic sites like the Harrison Gray Otis House at 85 Mount Vernon Street. However, the money-drop scene was filmed at Cambridge Cemetery. Several other films have had scenes filmed at Mount Auburn; read about them at mountauburn. org.

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Mary Baker Eddy( 1821 – 1910), Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, was buried with a telephone.

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When Mary Baker Eddy died in 1910, her casket was temporarily held and guarded at Mount Auburn’ s Receiving Tomb while her memorial was being designed and built. During this time, The Church of Christ, Scientist hired watchmen to protect Eddy’ s casket. An office, equipped with electricity, heat and a telephone, was constructed for their use within the main chamber of the Receiving Tomb. The office— including the telephone— was removed when Eddy was buried in 1911.

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