Stray off Lynn’s busiest streets and you will find the city’s past on display in quiet tree-shaded historic cemeteries where heroes, religious crusaders, captains of industry and women renowned are buried.
The graves in the New Light, Eastern and West Lynn burying grounds are succumbing to four centuries of New England weather and the modern threat of airborne chemical corrosion. The grass growing around them is cut by city workers who wage a sometimes-losing battle against trash and vandalism.
New Light Burial Ground off Silsbee Street resides in almost perpetual shade provided by towering trees. The cemetery is three, not one burial ground, with different periods in Lynn’s history defined by each section.
Time has all but erased names and dates carved into the stones in the center section and the plots behind Central Congregational Church. Some of the markers are sinking into the ground like floundering ships.
With traffic less than a block away on Broad and Silsbee streets barely audible, the graves beckon you to kneel and wonder for a minute or two about the person buried beneath your feet and how their hopes and dreams paralleled yours.
New Light’s section behind Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the most modern with graves dating into the 1940s, including Emma Eliza MacLean’s final resting place. Words carved into the marker assure the viewer that Emma is “sleeping till the resurrection.”
On upper Union Street, Old East or Eastern Burying Ground’s rolling slopes and walls of stone and iron-door crypts stand out in sharp contrast to the homes and shops around it. Heavy doors with hinges bigger than a man’s fist secure each crypt and the burial vaults are like a bulwark defying the busy work of the living and guarding the final rest places of the dead.
Off Western Avenue at South Street, the West Lynn Burying Ground is packed with Lynn’s history. Ranks of gray slate grave markers with ornately-carved inscriptions are interspersed with Revolutionary War-era graves.
The city’s oldest cemetery dates to 1637 and clairvoyant Mary “Moll” Pitcher is buried there along with Horace Pecker whose grave inscription reads: “He’s gone and left me.”
Some of the markers are broken and others are mere stone stubs succumbing to the elements. But Minuteman Daniel Tarbox has a fresh new grave marker saluting his service with the 4th Company, Lynn. He is buried near other Revolutionary War heroes — except for one. Near the burial ground’s South Street corner, a grave stands alone, its inscription barely readable. You have to trace the letters with your finger to make out the word “minutemen” and “Rev War.”
Time marches on for all of us. But in Lynn’s historic cemeteries, we can take a time out and ponder the city’s history and origins.
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
