SOUTHBOROUGH – Enclosed in a stone wall and shaded by trees, Southborough’s Old Burial Ground provides a peaceful resting place for the town’s earliest settlers. The burial ground, which is at the heart of the National Register Historic District, is an important cultural and historical site, and possibly was a Nipmuc burial site prior to colonial use.
There are currently 315 gravestones, although town records indicate at least 819 burials. In 2007, the Southborough Historical Society initiated a project that revealed 741 unmarked graves. This ground-penetrating radar survey also revealed a few burials outside the walls, a wintering vault, and a powder house. Markers of less durable materials likely disintegrated over time, and the hurricane of 1938 destroyed numerous stones.
The stones continue to deteriorate and the inscriptions are difficult to read on most. In 2017, the Southborough Historical Commission’s vice chair, the late Kate Matison, initiated an effort to conserve the markers. A professional survey identified 89 gravestones at high risk of deterioration and subsequent loss. Community Preservation Act funds were used to carry out restoration.
This small plot holds hundreds of stories, and thanks to the efforts of local volunteers, any genealogist or family historian can access biographical sketches of both prominent and ordinary citizens. From Revolutionary War veterans to school teachers to farmers, pieces of their lives are recorded and preserved, although some are forever lost.
The stone of “Martha” offers no further glimpse at who she was. No dates, no last name – only an epitaph recorded some years ago while it could still be read.
“My lovely child around thy tomb
May sweetest flowers forever bloom
And while in dust thy body lies
Thy soul is blooming in the skys.”
Veterans graves are respectfully marked, and prominent families are easily identified by their larger, more elaborate grave markers. But thanks to generations of preservationists, visitors wandering through the Old Burial Ground can also reflect on little Martha and so many others who, in the words of George Eliot, “lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
