Griffin Street Cemetery

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

The Griffin Street Cemetery is a 1.69-acre cemetery at S. 2nd & Griffin Sts. in New Bedford, founded in 1802.

Why it's listed

It was listed in the National Register in 2014 under criteria A, C and D, with local significance in landscape architecture, social history, community planning and development, and art.

Physical character

Marble and slate gravestones mark the burials, and a city-ordered clean-up in 1954 removed the fieldstone markers and replaced them with concrete. A board fence donated by Thomas W. Croacher went up in 1923, the Works Projects Administration replaced a wood fence with a stone wall in 1937, and a chain-link fence followed in 1947. Twenty trees and shrubs were planted in 1903, including an Oriental plane tree.

Historical context

The land was bought for a common burying ground in 1802, and the earliest surviving marker dates from 1804. In 1854 exhumations began for the extension of South Second Street, which sliced off the cemetery's southwest corner. Burials continued until 1881, and the city assumed full ownership of the cemetery in 1902. In 1938 the Daughters of the American Revolution prepared a list of 289 burials.