Old Granary Burying Ground

Tremont St.
at: Tremont and Park streets
Boston, Massachusetts

 At least 1,600 people are known to have been buried in this tiny graveyard, framed by the Park Street Church and the Boston Athenaeum. In land-poor colonial Boston, old graves often were dug up to make way for new bodies; the spongy ground hastened deterioration.

Among those laid to rest at this stop along the Freedom Trail: Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, the victims of the Boston Massacre and Christopher Snider, a 12-year-old boy killed by a British soldier 11 days before the massacre.

The large central obelisk marks the graves of Benjamin Franklin's parents; Franklin himself, though born in Boston, died in Philadelphia. And Elizabeth Vergoose, buried here in 1690, is believed to be the prolific storyteller later immortalized as Mother Goose.