580 Mount Auburn Street | Cambridge, MA 02138 | |
About: Since its founding in 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery has retained its original purpose of being a natural setting for the commemoration of the dead and for the comfort and inspiration of the bereaved and the general public. Its grounds offer a place for reflection and for the observation of nature—trees, shrubs, flowering plants, ponds, gentle hills, and birds both resident and migrant. Visitors come to study our national heritage by visiting the graves of noted Americans and enjoying the unique works of art and architecture throughout the landscape. Mount Auburn began the “rural” cemetery movement out of which grew America’s public parks. Its beauty and historic associations make it an internationally renowned landscape. Designated a National Historic Landmark, Mount Auburn remains an active, non-sectarian cemetery offering a wide variety of interment and memorialization options.
Mount Auburn is the final resting place for several notable and significant African Americans including: Harriet Jacobs, freedom-seeker and author of the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself; printer and activist Benjamin Franklin Roberts, who brought suit against the City of Boston in 1848 to legally overturn segregation in its schools; George Lewis Ruffin, the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and the first African American appointed a judge in Massachusetts; and Clement Morgan, one of the founders of the NAACP. For the number of individuals now buried at the Cemetery who were actively involved in supporting the Underground Railroad, Mount Auburn was designated a site on the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program in 2006.
Peter Byus monument Photos and text courtesy Mount Auburn Cemetery |
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