Did you know...?
By James N. Levitt, Mount Auburn Cemetery Trustee
Many individuals now interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery made landmark contributions to conservation and environmental stewardship. Their stories continue to inspire us.
Jacob Bigelow( 1787 – 1879, Beech Avenue, Lot # 113), a founder of Mount Auburn, was a public health and horticultural visionary. He understood that the establishment of burial space in a verdant, rural setting was both a sanitary necessity and a way to preserve nature.
Joseph Story( 1779 – 1845, Narcissus Path, Lot # 313), a Cemetery founder and U. S. Supreme Court Justice, articulated the healing power of nature in his 1831 address at Mount Auburn. Speaking in Consecration Dell, he said:“ all around us there breathes a solemn calm, as if we were in the bosom of a wilderness, broken only by the breeze as it murmurs through the tops of forest, or by the notes of the warbler pouring forth his matin or his evening song.” 1
Edward Everett( 1794 – 1865, Magnolia Ave., Lot # 17), President of Harvard, Governor of Massachusetts, U. S. Senator, and Secretary of State, helped to establish the Bunker Hill Monument and the Cemetery in the 1820s, and to preserve Washington’ s estate at Mount Vernon in the 1850s. His speech at Gettysburg in 1863 helped lay the groundwork for the establishment of a park at Yosemite in 1864 and the world’ s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872.
Asa Gray( 1810 – 1888, Holly Path, Lot # 3904), botanist, turned the Harvard Botanic Garden and Herbarium into a principal center for American botanical research. Gray used the Herbarium’ s collection, and comparisons between North American and Asian plants, to buttress Darwin’ s theory of evolution.
Charles W. Eliot( 1834 – 1926, Thistle Path, Lot # 713), President of Harvard from 1869 to 1909, ushered in several key conservation institutions: the Arnold Arboretum, the Harvard Forest, and the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture( now the Graduate School of Design). He helped protect land on Mount Desert Island in Maine that today forms the core of Acadia National Park.
Charles Eliot( 1859 – 1897, Amethyst Path, Lot # 5417), son of the above, worked with Frederick Law Olmsted and helped create the world’ s first regional land trust, The Trustees of Public Reservations( today The Trustees of Reservations), in 1891. Today, land trusts exist in every U. S. state and protect some 56 million acres.
Harriett Lawrence Hemenway( 1858 – 1960, Thistle Path, Lot # 1463), co-founded( with her cousin Minna Hall) the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1896. Hemenway and Hall urged ladies to give up wearing feathered hats and finally got the state to ban the trade in wild bird feathers. The pair worked to preserve habitat and create sanctuaries for native birds. Today, Mass Audubon is the largest conservation organization in New England, with 100,000 members and 34,000 acres of conservation land. Other famous ornithologists buried at Mount Auburn include William Brewster( 1851 – 1919), Larch Avenue Lot # 1099, and Ludlow Griscom( 1890 – 1959, Palm Avenue Lot # 7370).
Elisha Atkins M. D.( 1920 – 2005), who taught at Yale School of Medicine, was an avid birder and conservationist. In retirement, Atkins and his wife, Libby, lived next door to the Habitat Nature Sanctuary that his mother, Ruth Hornblower Churchill( 1887 – 1970, Birch Ave. Lot 8224), had created from the family’ s estate. The Atkinses gave it to the Mass Audubon Society.
Caroline Keller Loughlin( 1940 – 2013, Story Chapel Columbarium 4 Alcove E), worked with the Friends of Fairsted to advance the mission of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, and helped edit Olmsted’ s papers. She joined the board of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, protecting the parks in Boston and Brookline. At Mount Auburn, she served as trustee of the Friends of Mount Auburn and a Cemetery trustee.
1
Joseph Story, An address delivered on the dedication of the cemetery at Mount Auburn, September 24, 1831. Boston: Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham, 1831. Available at https:// archive. org / details / addressdelivered00story.
20 | Sweet Auburn