Miscellaneous

We did a little digging on this one (pun FULLY intended) and found a number of things about the Dartmouth Cemetery, also known as the “Burying Ground.” The cemetery was established in 1771 on a one-acre lot west of the Dartmouth Green, on grounds now bordered by Fairbanks Hall to the east, the Streeter-Lord-Gile dorm cluster and Tuck Drive to the north, the Thayer School of Engineering to the west and apartment buildings on West Wheelock Street to the south. The cemetery is the site of the graves of Hanover residents and Dartmouth students, faculty and staff dating back to the Rev. John Maltby, a stepson of Dartmouth founder Eleazar Wheelock, who died and was the first person buried in the cemetery in September, 1771. A number of Dartmouth notables are interred there, including Wheelock and his wife, Mary Brinsmead Wheelock; their son, John Wheelock (the second president of Dartmouth); Dartmouth presidents Francis Brown, Nathan Lord, Asa Dodge Smith, Samuel Bartlett, and William Jewett Tucker; Mary Maynard Hitchcock, for whom the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center are named; and Richard Hall ’27, who died while a freshman at the College and for whom the College’s infirmary – Dick Hall’s House – is named. In 1991, while restoring the graves of Eleazar and Mary Brinsmead Wheelock, conservators made an unexpected discovery: the original slate headstones of the Wheelocks were buried beneath the current marble stones. The slates were removed from the site and are now in storage at the College. There are around 1,200 graves in the Dartmouth Cemetery, but today Hanover residents are buried in the Pine Knoll Cemetery on the south end of town overlooking Mink Brook and the Connecticut River.

For more information on the history of the Dartmouth Cemetery, visit the Dartmo web site.

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