Spending Eternity on Harvard Hill

The grass has not yet fully grown back around the tomb of former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who died in August.

On a recent weekday morning, a bouquet of deteriorating flowers at the base of a monument neighboring Epps’ grave is the only sign that anyone has walked through Harvard’s171-year-old burial ground near the center of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

But there is so much demand to be laid to rest on Harvard Hill and so little space that in 1996, the Harvard Corporation forbade almost all casket burials at the plot.

“It has been very active in recent years,” says Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who revived interest in the plot. “There probably have been 10 interments up there in the last 10 years—almost one a year—after a long absence of burials.”

Indeed, over the last decade, as many people have been buried on Harvard Hill—including philosophers John Rawls, Conant University professor emeritus, and Pellegrino University Professor Robert Nozick—as had been buried there over the previous century.

All but one of the recently interred have been buried on the side of the hill that overlooks, in the distance, campus landmarks like Memorial Hall, William James Hall and the steeple of Memorial Church.

THE BIRTH

In 1833, George C. Shattuck, a physician and philanthropist educated at Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, gave Harvard four lots in the then newly founded Mount Auburn Cemetery. The cemetery had only been established two years earlier.

“Dr. Shattuck proposes to present to this University for a place of burial for such officers and students of the College as may decease there and whose friends are pleased to deposit their remains at that place,” wrote Charles P. Curtis, Shattuck’s lawyer, in an April 5, 1833 letter to University President Josiah Quincy, Class of 1790.

That same day, at a special meeting attended by Quincy, the Harvard Corporation accepted the gift and instructed Quincy to “address a letter to [Shattuck], expressive of their grateful sense of this donation.”

There are several plausible reasons why Shattuck, whose wealth derived from his wife’s sugar and trading fortune, gave the land to Harvard.

“I only know it happened,” says Douglas Marshall, who is writing a biography of Shattuck’s son. Marshall says Shattuck had also donated money to construct Harvard’s observatory and to rebuild an Ursuline convent after it was destroyed in an anti-Catholic riot.

According to Janet L. Heywood, vice president of interpretative programs at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Shattuck was a “good friend” of Jacob Bigelow, Class of 1806, who was a major player in the design and establishment of the cemetery and a Harvard science professor.

It’s possible the proponents of the cemetery, like Bigelow, were acting through Shattuck to try to ensure that Harvard students and faculty would be buried there.

“A private corporation set [Mount Auburn Cemetery] up...Very much like developing a mall today. You need to have an anchor store,” Gomes says. “The most quality visible place around was Harvard. The proprietors of Mount Auburn persuaded the [Harvard] Corporation to invest in their new cemetery.”

Heywood says the records are “fuzzy.”

But on Feb. 11, 1836, the Corporation would enlist the help of 10 benefactors to purchase the two-thirds of Harvard Hill that had not been donated by Shattuck. This cost came to $1,045.20.

According to Heywood, Harvard Hill is one of the “seven hills of Mount Auburn”—an allusion to the Seven Hills of Rome.

“People [then] were eager to inherit the mantle of civilization,” she says.

THE SLEEP

In the center of the land given to the University by Shattuck lies a huge sarcophagus-shaped tomb engraved with now-faded words of praise for the first law professor at Harvard, who was also the first person to be interred at Harvard Hill. According to Corporation records, Royall Professor of Law John Hooker Ashmun, Class of 1818, was buried on May 1, 1833.

“He did more sick, than others in health. He was fit to teach at an age when common men are beginning to learn, and his few years bore the fruit of long life,” the grave reads.

Ashmun was 33 years old when he died. Yet, he is the eldest of the first 10 people to be memorialized at the plot.

Two of them—Edward C. Mussey and William H. Cowan—were students who drowned in the Charles River, according to the Boston Almanac For The Year 1848.

Heywood says a college plot was a “necessity” since students would often die far from their homes. “If you died in the 1830s, there was no embalming,” she says, adding that the University could offer an “accommodation” in Cambridge.

Cowan, for instance, hailed from Louisiana.

Most of the early grave stones at Harvard Hill are for young professors or students.

“It didn’t have a lot of customers early on because Harvard people had their own cemetery lots,” Gomes says.

By the late 1850s, the 5,280 sq. ft. plot was falling into disrepair.

“As the lot contains no less than thirteen monuments—one to President [John T.] Kirkland, one to Professor Ashmun, whose remains are interred beneath and 11 others to instructors or to students of the College, it would seem that some steps should be taken to improve its appearance,” wrote W.G. Stearns on Oct. 23, 1856 on behalf of the superintendent of Mount Auburn Cemetery, who complained about a path overgrown with grass and the lack of a boundary around the plot.

Although records show that posts were eventually set up around Harvard Hill, there were still complaints in the early 20th century that the plot was not receiving adequate care.

“In 1909 the Cemetery received $275 the income of which was to be applied to the repair of the lot. The sum is wholly inadequate to the needs, but it has been used as far as it will go,” the Harvard Alumni Bulletin reported in April 1919. “Records at the cemetery show that interments there have never been frequent; three was the greatest number in a year, and fifteen years once elapsed without any.”

Little did the author know that over the next 80 years, only four people would be buried on Harvard Hill.

THE RESURRECTION

It was Gomes who would indirectly revive interest in the Harvard-owned plots in 1992.

He says he learned about Harvard Hill while taking care of the funeral arrangements of a sick friend, former Secretary to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences John R. Marquand, who also served as senior tutor of Dudley House.

Gomes says Marquand wanted to be buried in a casket, which posed problems at Mount Auburn because of limited space.

“They said, ‘Well the only place over which we don’t have any control over here is Harvard Hill. You can do anything you want to do up there,’” Gomes says. “I took my old friend to look at it. He picked the spot. It faces the College. Right from that stone you can see through the trees [to] Memorial Church.”

Gomes says Marquand’s large funeral introduced Harvard Hill to faculty members who had never heard of it.

“People began to hear...You can be buried up there if you’re at Harvard, for next to nothing,” Gomes says.

The funeral might have triggered a series of inquiries about the plot, since the Corporation decided only a few years after Marquand’s death to take steps to ensure that the Hill would not be overcrowded with graves.

“Recognizing that space at ‘Harvard Hill’ is inevitably limited, in the early 1990s the cemetery administration advised the Corporation to plan for the site’s future use,” University spokesperson Joe Wrinn writes in an e-mail.

He says that to save space, the Corporation decided to limit coffin burials, except when the person was opposed to cremation.

“They were terrified that there would be lots of stones,” Gomes says.

According to Wrinn, the Corporation erected a monument to “provide an appropriate memorial in cases of urn burials.”

Michael W. Roberts, the secretary to the Corporation until 1998, says he recalls a discussion about urn burials versus casket burials at the plot, but he did not comment further.

The secretary of the Corporation is the administrator of the plot. Current Secretary to the Corporation Marc Goodheart ’81 would not comment for this story.

The location of the monument, constructed in 1996, provides the hill’s best view of Memorial Hall. Six names are already engraved on its front.

“[It’s a] forward-looking idea on the part of Harvard. If they want to continue to do this, they have unlimited space underground,” Heywood says.

LIFE EVERLASTING

According to Wrinn, Harvard reserves the plot for “individuals who at the time of death are either students or university officers, including emeriti (with space reserved for spouses).”

But there’s one caveat: Requests to be buried at Harvard Hill have to be approved by the Corporation.

“Everybody buried there is by vote. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege that’s granted,” Gomes says.

Wrinn writes that “in recent years all requests consistent with the guidelines have been granted.” But Gomes says it is possible that the Corporation could reject applications in the future.

“Presumably if they thought it might be filled too fast, they might be given to exercise prudence. My sense is that it hasn’t happened yet,” he says.

Gomes also says alums could petition the Corporation to be buried at the plot, as long as they had a “formal and bona fide connection to Harvard University.”

Harvard Alumni Association Executive Director John P. Reardon Jr. ’60 says no alums have ever approached him asking to be buried at Harvard Hill.

“If 30,000 alums wanted to be buried there, it couldn’t happen,” he says.

In summer 1998, Reardon served as acting secretary to the Corporation. He says nobody requested to be buried on Harvard Hill during his tenure.

Gomes says few Corporation members want to be buried at Harvard Hill because they have their own family plots.

Indeed, no Harvard president has ever been buried at the plot, though Kirkland has a monument there.

Most of the plot’s newcomers are members of Harvard’s faculty.

The last four people to be buried at Harvard Hill—founder of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies Albert Szabo, Associate Dean of Freshmen Burris Young ’55, Rawls and Epps—spent a cumulative total of 138 years working at Harvard.

But few current senior faculty members seemed to know about the existence of the plot or how to be buried there.

Eight University professors contacted for this article said they did not know how to go about securing a spot on Harvard Hill. Of those eight, six said they had never heard of the plot, which serves as the final resting place for 36 people.

And many Harvard affiliates still forgo the privilege of being buried on the hill, in favor of their family plots.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby says he plans to be buried at his family’s plot in Stamford, Conn. Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 says he is unsure where his ashes will end up, but that their destination will not be Harvard Hill.

Like Kirby, Gomes says he plans to be buried at his family’s plot in Plymouth, Mass.

“I’ve given my life to Harvard,” he says. “I do not wish to give my body to Harvard.”

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.