Myles Standish Burying Ground
The oldest burying ground in Duxbury, MA is the Myles Standish Burying Ground, established along with the town of Duxbury in 1637. It was the second burial ground in Plymouth Colony, the first being Burial Hill in Plymouth, MA. The earliest burials likely took place in 1638/9, and the last regular burials occurred in the early 1800s. Before the 1890s it was known simply as The Old Burial Ground.
The Myles Standish Burying Ground is called "America's Oldest Maintained Cemetery", though for most of the 19th century it was neglected and left to re-wild. Renewed interest came after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish" was published and people began visiting again. In the late 1880s the town and the town historical society worked together to clear out the brush and debris that had accumulated in the burial ground, and began to catalog the gravestones that had survived. Hundreds of people were buried in the just under 1.5 acres of land, but only around 130 gravestones were located. Likely not everyone who was buried had a proper gravestone.
Most of the original graves would have been marked with unadorned fieldstones or wooden markers, as the earliest settlers were mainly farmers who were just setting up their homes in a land across the ocean from the ones they had left. Many of them were also Puritans, and Puritans culturally did not have elaborate funerals, let alone decorate graves. Any markers that were there would have served not to commemorate the dead, but to indicate where there was a grave. As the population grew, strict Puritanism wained and a more diversified workforce came to the area, bringing with it wealth and new ideas. With them came professionally carved gravestones. The earliest original gravestone is for Jonathan Alden who died in 1697, and it was likely carved by a Boston area stone cutter in the early 1700s.
Captain Myles Standish, for whom the burial ground was named, is buried there. Probably. He came over to the New World in the Mayflower with the first Pilgrims in 1620, a man hired by them to provide security and for his military expertise. After Plimoth Colony was established and its debts had been paid off, he was granted land in what is now Duxbury. Captain Standish died in 1656, and likely had a simple fieldstone grave marker. Researchers in the early 1890s consulted with his descendants, and came to the decision that the pyramid-shaped field stones near the center of the burying ground marked the burial places of Captain Standish and his family, and placed a memorial there. The larger of the fieldstones were incorporated into the memorial. In the 1950s the US Navy donated four retired cannons to the Town of Duxbury, and the town had them mounted on the memorial.
Three other Mayflower occupants are also buried here: John Alden and his wife Priscilla Mullins, and George Soule. The Alden, Soule, and Standish families have many members here, as do most of the earliest white settlers of Duxbury.
If you plan on visiting (and I hope you do!) there is no parking in the cemetery, and limited street parking in the area. The closest parking lot is about a 10 minute walk away, but it's a nice walk. Once you get to the burial ground there are some great informational signs, including one with details about the carvers of some of the gravestones. There are lots of trees inside the grounds which are great for shade, but make taking well-lit photographs tricky.
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