Providence, Rhode Island · founded 1700
North Burial Ground Foundation
An independent nonprofit being organized to support the preservation, maintenance, improvement and study of North Burial Ground, Providence’s municipal cemetery, in coordination with the City of Providence.
The ground covers about 110 acres and holds more than 100,000 people. It has been in use since 1700, and it is still an active cemetery.
What the Foundation is for
- Care of the grounds Tools, equipment and volunteer hands for the people who keep the cemetery, and for the repair and resetting of stones.
- Study of the people buried here Documented, cited research into the lives recorded on the stones, published free for anyone standing in front of one.
- Finding your way A cemetery of this size is hard to read on foot. Maps, routes and plain labelling, so a visitor can find a grave and know what they are looking at.
- Gathering at the cemetery Support for public events on the grounds, beginning with the annual Juneteenth observance at the Prescott Post lot.
The registry
The Foundation’s long work is a register of the people buried here: a page for each person and grave, drawn from the City’s own lot records and from the surveys made of the stones, with the documents shown beside the life. Tours and research projects are then routes and readings across that register, not separate efforts — a man can belong to several without being written up twice.
It will be built a lot at a time, and it begins with the Prescott Post lot.
Projects
First project Prescott Post Digital CompanionThe Civil War veterans’ lot: about 300 stones, Black and white soldiers and sailors buried in the same rows. A short, sourced life of each man, reachable from his stone.
Open the companion →Other parts of the ground will follow as the register reaches them: the Free Ground and the Friends’ Ground, the oldest sections, and the lots that the City’s own walking tours already visit.
Where things stand
The Foundation is being organized and is not yet incorporated. It is not accepting donations until it is. This page will carry the mission, board, giving and contact information once they exist.
In the meantime the most useful help is with the research: photographs of stones, family papers, and records of the men in the Prescott Post lot. See how to help.
Who is behind this
Organizer: Bernard Brennan, Rhode Island. Research and editorial decisions on this site are his as investigator and editor of record. Work on the grounds and the records is done with the knowledge and cooperation of the City of Providence, Department of Parks, which owns and operates North Burial Ground.