Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Inspiring All Who Visit | Page 23

Increasing Access and Enabling Scholarship:
More than 31,000
Historic Records Digitized in 2015
By Meg Winslow, Curator of Historical Collections and Melissa Banta, Historical Collections Consultant

Continuing a major initiative to digitize unique and fragile records that chronicle the history of Mount Auburn, we are
delighted to announce the digitization of more than 31,000 documents dating from the founding of the Cemetery. Housed
in climate-controlled storage in the Historical Collections Department, these materials have been preserved but heretofore
have not been easily accessible to researchers.
This collection of founding documents includes
reports and correspondence from the Secretaries,
Treasurers, and Superintendents of the Cemetery
as well as interment registers, correspondence
from lot owners, and illustrated descriptions
of lots and monuments. Together, the range of
materials provides context for understanding the
development of Mount Auburn and the rural
cemetery movement. Scholars, for example, will
be able to read a digital copy of an 1837 letter
from General Henry A. S. Dearborn to Dr. Jacob
Bigelow about the naming of the Cemetery’s
avenues and paths. The Historical Collections
Department can now provide enhanced access
to its unique records while protecting them from
light and handling.
Funding for this project was made possible
by a generous gift to the Cemetery in honor
of Mount Auburn Cemetery trustee Caroline
Loughlin (1940–2013), who worked devotedly
with these materials for many years in the
Historical Collections Department.
Above: Description of Lot
(1865), pen-and-ink drawing
of the obelisk on the Plympton
family lot.
Left: Register of Interments,
Vol. I (1832), recorded the first
interments at the Cemetery.

Summer 2015 | 21