Witchy Woman: 3 Cemeteries in Massachusetts -

The New England is so rich with history… being the whole birthplace of the American Revolution and all. And when one leaves Brooklyn at the crack of dawn, a time when the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is not a killjoy, you can get North swiftly. So swiftly that you’ll have hours to veg in a motel in New Hampshire while you wait patiently for your website host to reactivate your account after a week of malware and phishing attacks. Argh!

So it’s mid-winter recess and I needed out. With budgetary limitations seriously impacting my travel wishes, I decided to hit some cemeteries up north while snowfall wasn’t much of a threat. Hitting up cemeteries in Massachusetts is alluring in many ways. For one, you can see gravestones from the mid-1700’s. Then there’s the witches and folklore that comes along with a long, tainted history sandwiched with religious fundamentalism.

Let’s start with “Witch” Bonney at Lowell Cemetery, the striking woman guarding the Bonney family plot. Folklore makes many claims about this gorgeous patinaed figure. For one, it claims she was a witch who was killed when her powers were discovered. She is also expected to return to our realm by way of a hollow tree to get her revenge when her falling gown makes it to her waist. It is rumored to drop lower every Halloween. (source) Though this lore is certainly fascinating, also fascinating in a quantifiable way is the reported high electro-magnetic fields surrounding Witch Bonney.

Regardless of all that, she is quite the woman.

A quick stop at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, mostly because it was on the way to Lowell from my first stop in Boston. But! Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first rural cemetery in the United States, dedicated in 1831, influencing many of my most favorite burial places, Laurel Hill in Philadelphia and Green-Wood in Brooklyn, for two. These are pretty important claims to fame. Plus, you get to see the Harvard campus on the way.

More of the usual mourning ladies

A lazy cherub.

A newer grave’s angel. My goodness they don’t make them like they used to.

I have never seen this kind of headstone. A nice pop of color.

Lastly, Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. The most notable monument is Daniel Chester French’s Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, below.

Does his work look familiar? It should! He did Columbia University’s Alma Mater, on my blog a few posts ago, as well as tons of other New York City monuments and a little known sculpture called The Lincoln Memorial. And remember that Great War memorial In Brooklyn’s Prospect Park? That sculptor, Henry Augustus Lukeman, studied with Daniel Chester French. You can definitely see the influence.