Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery
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Common Burying Ground
and Island Cemetery |
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| Location | Newport, Rhode Island |
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| Area | 31 acres (13 ha) |
| Built | 1640 |
| Architect | Multiple |
| Architectural style | Beaux Arts, Other, Romanesque |
| NRHP Reference # | |
| Added to NRHP | May 1, 1974 |
The Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery are a pair of separate cemeteries on Farewell and Warner Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Together they contain over 5,000 graves, including a colonial-era slave cemetery and Jewish graves. The pair of cemeteries was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a single listing in 1974.
The Common Burial Ground was established in 1640 on land given to city of Newport by John Clarke. It features what is probably the largest number of colonial era headstones in a single cemetery, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States. The predominantly African-American northern section of the cemetery is commonly referred to by local African-Americans as "God's Little Acre".
The Island Cemetery was established by the city in 1836, and transferred to the private Island Cemetery Corporation in 1848. Many members of Newport's most prominent families have been buried there over the years. Notable people buried there include Medal of Honor recipient Hazard Stevens, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, Commodore Matthew C. Perry and financier August Belmont.
In 2016, three gravestones were discovered which had been lost for years. One stone, found in Pennsylvania, was a 12 x 24 marker for a 1-year-old child. The others were 1835 stones for a Newport woman, which were found in a Newport yard during a renovation. The recovered stones were reset in the Common Burying Ground in 2016 by the Newport Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission.
Original grave slab for Governor John Cranston on left, and newer slab for both him and his son, Governor Samuel Cranston, on right
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