The story of one of the Boston area’s most famous attractions, the Mount Auburn Cemetery, and how its founders and “residents” have influenced American culture

When Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded, in 1831, it revolutionized the way Americans mourned the dead by offering a peaceful space for contemplation. This cemetery, located not far from Harvard University, was also a place that reflected and instilled an imperative to preserve and protect nature in a rapidly industrializing culture—lessons that would influence the creation of Central Park, the cemetery at Gettysburg, and the National Parks system. Even today this urban wildlife habitat and nationally recognized hotspot for migratory songbirds continues to connect visitors with nature and serves as a model for sustainable landscape practices. Beyond Mount Auburn’s prescient focus on conservation, it also reflects the impact of Transcendentalism and the progressive spirit in American life seen in advances in science, art, and religion and in social reform movements. In The Lively Place, Stephen Kendrick celebrates this vital piece of our nation’s history, as he tells the story of Mount Auburn’s founding, its legacy, and the many influential Americans interred there, from religious leaders to abolitionists, poets, and reformers.

Stephen Kendrick is senior minister at the First Church in Boston, Unitarian Universalist. He is the author or coauthor of Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes, Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America, Douglass and Lincoln, and the novel Night Watch.

INVOCATION
Into the Garden

AUTUMN
Consecration Day
From Crypt to Garden
Finding Yourself Lost
A New Manifestation
An Earthly Paradise

WINTER
Sacred Tourists
Candles in the Dark
Frozen Transcendentalism
The Rivals
The Poet and the Abolitionist
“So Young and Victorious”

SPRING
Going Over the Ground
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
The Time of the Singing of Birds
”My Story Ends in Freedom...”
Grave Words

SUMMER
Greening A Natural Shift
Melting Art
Call Me Trimtab
The Experimental Garden
The Sphinx Bigelow Redux

EPILOGUE
A New Adam and Eve

APPENDIX
The Residents—Where to Find Them

Acknowledgments

Notes