Old Burying Point

aka Charter Street Cemetery

October 12, 2007 and May 22-23, 2008

The small, two-block avenue in downtown Salem called Charter Street was laid out in 1767 and has claimed a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.  It once ran between the town wharf and what is now Market Street in front of the Immaculate Conception Church.  On this street you can find the second oldest cemetery in the United States.

Dated from 1632, the Old Burying Point, also known as the Charter Street Cemetery, is the oldest burying grounds in the city of Salem.  Some of the buried include a Mayflower passenger by the name of Captain Richard More, Governor Simon Bradstreet, Reverend John Higginson and Chief Justice Benjamin Lynde. 

Perhaps the most famous person buried in the Charter Street Cemetery is Justice John Hathorne, a man who is still known for his cruelty of mankind and declaring death upon 20 innocent people in the hype of the 1652 Salem Witch Hysteria.  Nathaniel Hawthorne is Justice John Hathorne’s great-great-grandson.  Ashamed of his ancestor’s behavior, Nathaniel changed the spelling of the Hathorne family name to Hawthorne.

Captain Richard Moore, Mayflower passenger

Memorial stone for Bridget Bishop, accused of practicing witchcraft and hanged in 1692

Walking through the Boston-Salem area cemeteries, you will notice two designs often carved into the gravestones.  Those designs are explained as:

*Death’s Head, a skull with wings attached to the side of the skull or placed above it depicts morality.  Sometimes this image was carved with crossbones as well as the wings.

*The Soul Effigy originally portrayed as death’s head has been changed in the mid-1700’s to the softer form of a cherub’s head with wings.  This carving portrays the soul’s reward of morality after death.