Granary Burying Ground

Boston needed more burial space

By 1660, Boston’s earlier burial ground near King’s Chapel was overcrowded. Town officials set aside part of the Common for a new burial place, first known by names such as the South, Common or Middle Burying Ground.

Why it is called “Granary”

The burying ground took its present name in 1737 after a public grain-storage building was moved nearby to the site later occupied by Park Street Church.

More people than stones

Boston records roughly 2,345 gravestones and tombs at the Granary, but estimates more than 5,000 people are buried there. Family tombs and multiple burials mean the visible markers are only part of the story.

Revolutionary figures

Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Robert Treat Paine—three signers of the Declaration of Independence—are buried here, along with Paul Revere, James Otis, Peter Faneuil and other prominent Bostonians.

The Boston Massacre dead

The burial ground includes the victims of the Boston Massacre, including Crispus Attucks. Their grave became part of the physical geography of Revolutionary memory.

Benjamin Franklin’s parents

A tall obelisk near the center commemorates the tomb of Josiah and Abiah Franklin, parents of Benjamin Franklin. The monument is conspicuous among the older slate markers.

Children and ordinary Bostonians

Granary was not reserved for famous people. Children, poor residents, people from the adjacent almshouse, prison and workhouse, and Bostonians from many economic backgrounds were buried here. A tomb designated for children held more than 400 young people.

Black and Indigenous burials

Boston notes that Black and Indigenous people are believed to have been buried toward the front of the site, alongside people of low economic status. This history complicates the famous-name focus of many cemetery tours.

A landscape rearranged

Many markers were moved into straighter rows over time, especially as nineteenth-century landscaping changed the burying ground. The present arrangement therefore does not always show original burial locations.

The Egyptian gate and nineteenth-century appearance

The wall, iron fence, Egyptian-style gate, walkways and plantings largely reflect nineteenth-century improvements. Modern restoration has preserved much of that later historic appearance.

Why it mattered

Granary Burying Ground is both a memorial landscape and a demographic record. Its famous graves draw attention, but the thousands of less-visible burials reveal disease, childhood mortality, inequality and the everyday population of colonial and early-national Boston.

Timeline