Eastern Cemetery

      My second site visit was to Eastern Cemetery, another stop on the Portland Freedom Trail. I visited on a week night in late March, and unfortunately the cemetery was closed and locked, even though I had arrived an hour and a half before sunset. I walked the perimeter fence and was struck by the trash, broken headstones and fallen trees. This cemetery, for all of its historical significance, needs some tending. Nobody was checking it out except me and my friend Jay. I took photos and vowed to come back another time so I could wander the headstones and see for myself just who lived here, so to speak.

     Eastern Cemetery is located at 224 Congress Street at the base of Munjoy Hill and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the oldest large cemetery in Portland, established in 1668, soon after much of southern Maine was annexed by Massachusetts Bay Colony but before the Province of Maine officially became part of the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1691 - and before Falmouth was renamed Portland. The cemetery is very close to the waterfront and was located in a mixed neighborhood of immigrants, including Jews, African Americans and Irish. I discovered this was also a stop on the Maine Irish Heritage Trail, for many early Irish Catholics are buried here, though many of the graves are lost.

    The cemetery is about 5 acres in size, though it began as a smaller plot adjacent to a common green. It contains remains of those who fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. There is a monument to the first Portland soldier killed in the Civil War, Alonzo Stinson (pictured below), but most burials ended in the cemetery before the Civil War; some sources suggest the cemetery was closed in the 1860's with scattered burials shortly thereafter. In addition to war veterans (the captains of the HMS Boxer and USS Enterprise who fought off Monhegan in the War of 1812 are buried side by side), many people who were influential in Portland's civic life are buried here, including not a few abolitionists (the cemetery is not far from the Abyssinian Meeting House), congressmen, and artists. Some of the first English settlers in Falmouth are buried here, too, though the early grave sites can no longer be identified.

     Although it was no longer in regular use at the time, the cemetery was pictured prominently in a painting dated circa 1866 of the Great Fire of Portland from Eastern Cemetery, 1866 by George Frederick Morse, a Portland artist. I found this interesting, having learned about the fire in association with the saving of the Abyssinian Meeting House nearby.

   
 The cemetery is significant because it is a physical and ancestral link to Maine's very early colonial history up through the mid-19th century. It reminds us that the people of Portland have been participants in major events in American history and have left their mark on the social, political and physical landscape of Maine and the United States.

     The cemetery is cared for by a group called Spirits Alive which conducts historical tours July through October for a small fee, all of which go to maintaining the cemetery. The mostly volunteer group also holds events and lectures, with the aim of keeping the cemetery open, accessible and well maintained while educating the public about its history and its inhabitants. 

Sources consulted include:
http://www.spiritsalive.org/
http://www.ci.portland.me.us/publicworks/historiccemeteriesinfomation.asp
www.mainememory.net
National Register of Historic Places