Copp's Hill is an elevation in the historic North End of Boston, Massachusetts. It is bordered by Hull Street, Charter Street and Snow Hill Street. The hill takes its name from William Copp, a shoemaker who once owned the land.Copp's Hill Burying Ground is a stop on the Freedom Trail.
Like all of the Shawmut Peninsula, the hill was Algonquian territory before the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first English settlers to the hill arrived in the 1630s and built a windmill atop the hill to grind grain.
Founded by the town of Boston in 1659, Copp's Hill Burying Ground is the second oldest burying ground in the city. The cemetery's boundaries were extended several times, and the grounds contain the remains of many notable Bostonians in the thousands of graves and 272 tombs.
Among the Bostonians buried here are the original owner, William Copp, his children, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Robert Newman (the patriot who placed the signal lanterns in the steeple of Old North Church for Paul Revere's midnight ride to Lexington and Concord), Prince Hall (the father of Black Freemasonry), and many unmarked graves of the African Americans who lived in the "New Guinea" community at the foot of the hill. The cemetery was not an official stop on the Freedom Trail when it was created in 1951, but it has since been added and is much-frequented by tourists and photographers.