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King's Chapel Burying Ground Review
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King's Chapel Burying Ground
- Address: Tremont St. at School St., Downtown, Boston, MA | Map It
- Phone: 617/227-2155
- www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/kingschapel.asp
- Category: Cemeteries
- Location: Downtown
Fodor's Review:
Legends linger in this oldest of the city's cemeteries. Glance at the handy map of famous grave sites (posted a short walk down the left path) and then take the path to the right from the entrance and then left by the chapel to the gravestone (1704) of Elizabeth Pain, the model for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Note the winged death's head on her stone. Also buried here is William Dawes Jr., who, with Dr. Samuel Prescott, rode out to warn of the British invasion the night of Paul Revere's famous ride (because of Longfellow's stirring poem, Revere is the one who gets all the glory today). Other Boston worthies entombed here -- including the first Massachusetts governor, John Winthrop, and several generations of his descendants -- were famous for more-conventional reasons. The prominent slate monument between the cemetery and the chapel tells (in French) the story of the Chevalier de Saint-Sauveur, a young officer who was part of the first French contingent that arrived to help the rebel Americans in 1778. He was killed in a riot that began when hungry Bostonians were told they couldn't buy the bread the French were baking for their men, using the Bostonians' own wheat -- an awkward situation only aggravated by the language barrier. The chevalier's interment here was probably the occasion for the first Roman Catholic Mass in what has since become a city with a substantial Catholic population.
- Open: Late spring-early fall, daily 9-5; winter, daily 9-3
- Metro: Park St., Government Center
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