Telling Their Stories: Inside Providence’s North Burial Ground

Prescott Post, a monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, located at North Burial Ground in Providence. Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground

North Burial Ground, the 110-acre cemetery bordered by North Main Street and Branch Avenue, is a microcosm of Providence itself, with governors, war heroes, immigrants, prominent businessmen, enslaved people, the poor, Black and Indigenous people all sharing space within its leafy environs.

City Cemeteries Director Annalisa Heppner leads a tour
for Rhode Island Historical Society members, stopping at the Bannisters’ place of rest. Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground

To Annalisa Heppner, archaeologist-turned-Providence’s city cemeteries director, it’s a place filled with thousands of untold narratives waiting to be discovered. 

“There’s a lot of crossover between how to think about a historic cemetery and think about archeology, and that interaction,” says Heppner, who’s been at the helm since 2021. “Material culture in one place is really cool, and the cemetery is such a great example of that.”

Opened in 1700, North Burial Ground is the largest municipal cemetery in the area, with 100,000 people interred inside. Notable residents include former governor (and signer of the Declaration of Independence) Stephen Hopkins; Sarah Helen Whitman, the former fiancee of Edgar Allan Poe; and several members of the Brown family, including Chad Brown, Moses Brown and John Carter Brown. 

The Brown family Mausoleum. Photo by Dana Laverty.

It’s still an active cemetery with more than 200 burials per year. 

Before Heppner came on board, the director’s position had been defunct for thirty-five years and public programs at the cemetery were few and far between. Wendy Nilsson, the city’s superintendent of parks, wanted to involve the community more and looked to Heppner for ideas.  

Heppner was inspired by programs she’d seen at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles and the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. But most of all, she was inspired by her Mexican heritage and celebrating Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday when people remember their deceased loved ones, with her family.

“I grew up visiting cemeteries, going to visit my relatives who were buried very regularly, and seeing cemeteries as a place to visit,” she says. “And I knew I wanted to bring that to North Burial Ground.” 

She partnered with Rhode Island Latino Arts and Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum to create the celebration, where people gather at the cemetery to remember their departed loved ones, hold a procession and decorate calaveras, traditional Mexican sugar skulls. This year’s event will be held Nov. 2.

Rooted in Culture

A bevy of historic markers at the North Burial Ground. Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground

The cemetery’s programming focuses on three tenets: nature, art and cultures, says Brianna Hutchins, the cemetery’s interim director. Moon walks with folks from the Roger Williams Museum of Natural History & Planetarium are popular, as are recent events that focused on printmaking and writing. During this summer’s Cemetery Scenes 2 series, people brought chairs and snacks to the cemetery to watch “Gates of Heaven,” a 1978 movie about a Californian pet cemetery with a discussion about the afterlife.

They’ve also held sessions on gravestone cleaning, and Earth Day and Memorial Day events.

“We love a tour, but it’s not just about doing tours,” Heppner says. “It’s about, what can you take from this space? What does it make you think about, and how can you more deeply engage with something that is this amazing historical record of the city of Providence?”

Last year the cemetery held more than forty public events. 

For one of their most popular offerings, Heppner drew inspiration from the historical uses of cemeteries to bring people together for a Victorian picnic. 

In the late 1800s, before most municipal parks were built, people would hold picnics in cemeteries, which were usually the only green spaces around. The same held true in Rhode Island, where Providence and Pawtucket residents used North Burial Ground as a place for picnicking and taking in the lush scenery. On one weekend in 1898, for example, 1,000 people visited North Burial Ground for recreational purposes, Heppner says.

Their Sunday 1899 event aims to recreate a Victorian day in the cemetery, with folks dressing in period costume and bringing picnic fare to enjoy. It’s usually held in June, with Burrillville’s Liberty Farm giving horse-drawn carriage rides, the Lippitt House Museum sharing its large selection of lawn games, and tintypes, tours and tarot card readings rounding out the day. 

It’s a popular event that’s been growing ever since its inception; more than 100 people turned out for this summer’s festivities. 

Docent Sabrina, left, and Director Annalisa Heppner, right, welcome guests to the North Burial Ground’s Sunday 1899 event. Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground.

Drawing From the Past

Several tours highlight the people interred within the cemetery, with Heppner often leading what she calls “director’s tours,” highlighting a particular topic or the lesser-known souls who call North Burial Ground home. 

“We’ve had this amazing diversity of culture, of experience, of story at North Burial Ground ever since it was opened,” she says. “When we do tours, we try really hard to make sure that we share stories from all these different kinds of people and not just focus on the more already well-known folks. So that’s been really cool to dive into the social histories of people that you wouldn’t necessarily have heard about in your history books.” 

Trained docents also lead sunset and notable interments tours, and the website has several self-guided tours (think women’s history, Black heritage and relocated cemeteries) online.

The Cemetery Scenes series shows films in Randall Park, a green space at North Burial Ground.

Of course, this being spooky season, Heppner and her team have a host of supernaturally tinged events planned. Every year they host a ghost tour, and this year’s “Phantasmagoria” event takes place Oct. 26, with costumed actors playing some of the burial ground’s residents and performing various vignettes throughout the cemetery. The Halloween tour on Oct. 31, and an accompanying book, will highlight some of the women buried at the cemetery, including Patience Borden, a free woman of color who was active in the First Baptist Church, and Christiana Carteaux Bannister, a nineteenth-century hair doctress and philanthropist who was married to artist Edward Mitchell Bannister.

Hutchins is both writing the book and leading the tour and encourages participants to come in costume. 

“People really get into it and dress up,” says Hutchins. “The enthusiasm and passion from our community and volunteers — they are super into it, and always ask to volunteer and help out, which we love.”

Looking to the Future

Interim Director Brianna Hutchins leads a gravestone cleaning workshop. Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground

The city will invest close to $2 million in the cemetery in the next two years, Heppner says, with the money going to fund future programs, improve roads and ease flooding problems. The Moshassuck River runs underneath the cemetery and overflows on occasion, causing significant flooding.

They’d also like to rehabilitate the prominent Receiving Tomb, a Beaux Arts structure built in 1903 to hold bodies during the winter months when the ground was too cold for burials. A new gate and landscaping will also be added to the Cemetery Street entrance, which most people avoid since it looks “a little rough,” Heppner says. (Most people use the cemetery’s main entrance at the intersection of North Main Street and Branch Avenue.)

Under professor Jordi Rivera Prince, Brown University archaeology and anthropology students are building a database of the cemetery’s historical headstones and an accompanying AI tool that will help fill in words and engravings lost to time. The cemetery’s written burial database begins in 1848, with no written records before that. 

With the public’s renewed interest in the cemetery, a team of dedicated volunteers and an infusion of cash, Heppner is excited for the burial ground’s future. 

“The last time the city put money like this into North Burial Ground was during the Works Progress Administration,” she says. “It’s going to make a huge difference.” 5 Branch Ave., Providence, 680-5318, providenceri.gov/parks/north-burial-ground

There are more than 1,000 trees in the cemetery, which makes it a spectacular place to gaze at the fall foliage. See if you can spot the white elm, which has been on cemetery maps since 1762. Photo by Dana Laverty

Fun Facts

• The Providence Parks Department owns and operates the burial ground, which holds 200 burials a year.
• Marble from the “new” State House was used to create the Marble Steps at the North Main Street pedestrian entrance.
• The unofficial mascot is Charlie the coyote, who’s called the cemetery home for the last decade. This year he and his mate raised six pups.
• The cemetery is older than Roger Williams Park, which was created in 1871.
• The terminus of the Blackstone Canal f lows along the cemetery’s Potter’s Field, under a leafy canopy of trees. 

October Events

Oct. 24: 

Mourning jewelry lecture.

Oct. 26: 

Phantasmagoria ghost tour, 5–7 p.m.

Oct. 31: 

Halloween tour, 5 p.m.

Nov. 2: 

Día de los Muertos celebration.

Check providenceri.gov/parks/north-burial-ground for times.

Photo courtesy of North Burial Ground.

Self-Guided Tours

Visitors can take several guided tours, including a Black heritage tour, a notable interments tour and an intriguing “Faded Lovers” tour. providenceri.gov/parks/north-burial-ground-tours

Explore Other Cemeteries

NORTH

Swan Point Cemetery

Providence

This historical cemetery established in
1846 is the perfect place for a fall stroll, with a wide variety of trees encompassing 200 acres on the East Side of Providence. Famous residents include H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Burnside, Elizabeth Buffum Chace and former U.S. Senator Theodore Francis Green. 585 Blackstone Blvd., Providence, 272-1314, swanpointcemetery.com. Take a self-guided historical walking tour: swanpointcemetery.com/the-estate/historical-walking-tours  

EAST

God’s Little Acre

Newport

This cemetery is the oldest surviving collection of burial markers for enslaved and free people of African descent. The section of the Newport Common Burying Ground dates to Colonial times and holds 300 visible burial markers. Farewell Street, Newport, colonialcemetery.com  

SOUTH

Chestnut Hill Cemetery

Exeter

Visit the grave of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown, who died in 1892 from tuberculosis and who superstitious neighbors claimed was a vampire when her exhumed body seemed almost alive, with blood still red in her heart and liver. Will you see Mercy’s sad soul in the form of a glowing blue orb? 10 Rod Rd. (Route 2), Exeter