By K.B. Sherman, Contributing Writer
Shrewsbury – Mountain View Cemetery is located on the west side of Boylston Street near Shrewsbury Center and is owned and maintained by the town of Shrewsbury.
“We use contractors for the mowing of the grounds and a contractor to do the grave excavation services,” Director of Shrewsbury Parks and Recreation Angela Snell explained. “We average approximately 105 full burials a year and 35 cremation burials a year. Due to the increase in cremations, Town Meeting in May of 2015 appropriated $75,000 from cemetery trust funds to be used to build a columbaria. We are working on the design of the columbaria this fall.”
The town installs free of charge government markers provided by the U.S. Veteran’s Administration and the Sunday before Memorial Day, flags are placed on the graves of veterans.
“The Shrewsbury Girl Scouts volunteer to place them for us,” Snell noted.
The Cemetery Department office is now located at the Town Hall with the Parks and Recreation Office. Grave space is limited to Shrewsbury residents.
In 2004 a transcription was completed with over 9,835 graves listed. Since then, some corrections and updates have been made. Sections 1 – 9 are the oldest parts of the cemetery. If the death date is missing on the stone, that person could still be living and for privacy the name will not be listed.
The cemetery has a rich history. In 1727 a graveyard was established on the Meeting House Hill Land (now the center of Shrewsbury), the same year the town was incorporated. With the incorporation of the town, specific items had to be in place, such as a meeting house, town pound (a sort of jail), and a “burying place” under Crown law. In 1730, the town voted to fence and clear the “burying place,” which is the area that is now referred to as the “old corner” of Mountain View cemetery.
In 1746, the ”parish” voted that Rev. Job Cushing hold the deed on the burying place for four years upon the condition he should clear up and keep down the brush in it and keep up the fencing.
In 1752, the Precinct Committee was voted to take up the care of the burying place for the future. Next year, the town voted to “lot out” the burying ground to Nahum Ward, Esq. for seven years to have the brush kept down and the fences kept in repair, and have nothing but sheep pastured in said yard.
In 1765, Daniel Rand was chosen to make a gate for the burying place and the next year the bills were paid on the account for a total cost of the gate.
For many years the burying ground was neglected.
In 1791, the proprietors (those in charge of the tax monies) granted to the town “2A & 96 rods” (80,000 square feet plus an additional 1,584 feet – a puzzling measurement) of the Meeting House Hill land for the burying ground, which included the old original corner and “that westward to the land then recently purchased from Mrs. Geo. Sumner and extending northward to about the location of her driveway leading from Boylston Street across the cemetery.”
In 1799, the proprietors voted to sell the wood on the portion of the Meeting House Hill land lying north of the burying ground.
In later years, the town purchased additional land of the Sumner’s to enlarge the cemetery and by 1904 the northern line of the cemetery was identical with the old boundary of the historic Meeting House land of Win. Taylor – who owned the original portion of the future town center as a portion of the “Old Haynes Farm.” Win. Taylor subsequently deeded 15 acres of “summit” land to the proprietors by Warranty Deed and recorded in the Middlesex County Registry, originally dated Oct. 17, 1721.
Some of the more well-known residents buried there include Artemas Ward, a major general in the Revolutionary War and a Massachusetts congressman; Capt. Levi Pease, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, tavern owner and stagecoach entrepreneur; Capt. Abijah Wyman, a captain in the Continental Army, general store owner and part of the family that created the Wyman-Gordon Company; Capt. Joab Hapgood, noted gun maker; and Anthony “Spag” Borgatti, the well-known store owner and philanthropist.
A complete online overview of the cemetery and individual graves is available at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vtcstjoh/mtview/mtview.htm.