Sudbury’s Revolutionary War Cemetery: Description and History
The Revolutionary War Cemetery (RWC) is located on the south side of Old Concord Road, just east of its intersection with Old Sudbury Road. The RWC occupies approximately one-and-one-half acres and is roughly rectangular in shape. It is enclosed by a low stone wall.
To the east-northeast, the cemetery shares a wall with the Sudbury Town Pound (c. 1797) which is adjacent to the Hearse House (c. 1800). The Town Pound was initially used to contain wayward livestock. Animal owners were charged a fee to cover the feed cost for their animals until retrieval. The Hearse House stored the town’s funeral carriage. If space permitted, the Hearse House was also used to store the town’s stock of ammunition.
There are approximately 456 observable headstones, some with footstones, dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The gravestones are arranged in rows with a northeast-southwest orientation. Several gravestones within the site are inscribed with the names of multiple interred individuals, indicating shared or familiar burial practices.
Most gravestones are slate markers with flat, pointed or rounded tops and incised carvings, including examples of eighteenth-century funerary motifs such as soul effigies, pinwheels, urns, willows and spirals. Some of the soul effigies are winged, symbolizing the spirit of the deceased. Some of the gravestone markers show signs of wear, weathering, lichen or displacement, but the inscriptions remain legible on many stones.
As is common with old historic Massachusetts cemeteries, the RWC had several names over the years, including the “Burying Ground”, “Old Burying Ground,” “Old Cemetery, Old Town Cemetery,” “Revolutionary Cemetery,” and “Revolutionary War Cemetery,” among others. The earliest Town records, as researched by the Sudbury Historical Commission, indicate that the cemetery was originally referred to simply as “Burying Place.”
The burial ground first laid out in 1716 in an area then known as Rocky Plain, situated centrally for the West Sudbury residents who had separated ecclesiastically from East Sudbury in 1708. The burial ground preceded the construction of Sudbury’s First Parish Church by six years.
The RWC served as the final resting place for many of the early inhabitants of western Sudbury and continued in active use through the 19th century. Some of the names associated with the cemetery include Balcom, Bent, Brigham, Brintnal, Brown, Carter, Dutton, Goodnow, Hayden, Haynes, How, Hunt, Jones, Maynard, Moore, Noyes, Parmenter, Plympton, Puffer, Rice, Richardson, Smith, Wheeler and Willis.
By the time of the American Revolution, Sudbury was the largest town in Middlesex County. The cemetery holds the remains of numerous patriots, including Deacon Josiah Haynes, who died on April 19, 1775, at the age of 79 during the march to Concord. Other known Revolutionary War veterans interred here include Capt. Asahel Wheeler, Col. Ezekiel How, Capt. Jabez Puffer, Capt. David Haynes, and William Rice, Esq. The cemetery also contains the remains of three of Sudbury’s ministers: Reverend Israel Loring (1745–1772), Reverend Jacob Bigelow (1742–1816), and Reverend Rufus Hurlbut (1787–1839). Reverend Loring was ordained in 1706 and invited to serve as Sudbury’s minister, a position he held for sixty-six years. Reverend Bigelow, ordained in 1772, succeeded Reverend Loring in the west precinct and served until his death in 1816. Reverend Hurlbut was ordained in 1817 and preached until 1839.
One tomb, marked with a slate stone that reads “HOPESTILL BROWN, ESQ., TOMBE. 1731,” contains the remains of descendants of Deacon William Brown. It is the only underground tomb within the cemetery and lies west of the Plympton monument.
Over the years, many of the graves have become unmarked due to erosion or loss of headstones. The earliest burials are concentrated near the center of the yard, with some of the oldest inscriptions dating to ca. 1727. In July 2012, TopoGraphix, LLC, conducted a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey of the cemetery to locate possible unmarked human graves. A total of 976 “anomalies” were discovered and identified with a high probability of being human graves. In addition, the ground area around each anomaly was probed with a metal rod for possible buried headstones. A total of 249 headstones or rock-like substance were struck, possibly denoting the presence of a burial.
Today, the Burying Place remains an important site of local history and memory, with connections to the town’s founding, its role in the American Revolution, and the lives of early residents on the west side of Sudbury. The property was designated as part of the local Old Sudbury Center Historic District in 1963 and was listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as a contributing property in the Sudbury Center Historic District.
The Revolutionary War Cemetery 2026 Updated Kiosk and Entrance Signage
Members of the Sudbury Historical Commission and the Sudbury Historical Society jointly developed an updated Revolutionary War Cemetery (RWC) kiosk and cemetery entrance signage. Participants for this workgroup included: Jan Costa and Margi Katz (from the Sudbury Historical Commission) and Beth Gray-Nix, Ellen Neiterman and the late Ed Kreutz (from the Sudbury Historical Society).
The current, updated kiosk replaces a 2017 kiosk which was developed and installed in 2017 by Liam Huston for his Eagle Scout Project.
Both the Sudbury Historical Commission and the Sudbury District Commission reviewed and approved the new signage. Much assistance was provided by Sudbury’s Planning and Community Development and Sudbury’s Department of Public Works.
The Revolutionary War Cemetery is under the jurisdiction of the Sudbury Historical Commission.
Community Preservation Act funds were utilized in the kiosk and entrance signage development.