A single museum presentation sparked historian Pam Peterson’s years-long journey through Marblehead’s 13 historic cemeteries. What began as a basic presentation on them evolved into the first comprehensive book on these burial grounds.
Peterson’s new book — “A Guide to Historic Burial Grounds of Marblehead” — fills what Marblehead Museum Executive Director Lauren McCormack calls an informational vacuum.
“We don’t have a lot of information in one spot,” McCormack told the Current at the June 30 book launch. “So this book is sort of filling a vacuum and putting it all into one place, so that we can access it really easily.”
McCormack praised Peterson as “a great writer” and “great storyteller” whose work helps ensure important stories remain accessible.
The project may have begun modestly when Peterson agreed to give a museum talk about local cemeteries, but that surface-level overview soon evolved into something far more ambitious.
“I realized as I was doing it that there wasn’t any single place with all the information about them together,” Peterson said.
The roughly 130-page book, complete with photos, portraits and maps, serves as both a directory and a deeper exploration of Marblehead’s cultural roots, treating cemeteries as “landscapes of memory” that trace the town’s evolution over nearly four centuries.
From the stark Puritan iconography of Old Burial Hill to the Victorian park-like design of Waterside Cemetery, these sites chronicle changing attitudes toward death and remembrance.
Peterson, who also authored “Marblehead Myths, Legends and Lore” in 2007, uncovered compelling human stories behind the headstones. Among her favorites is Ezekiel Darling, a young sailor who served aboard the USS Constitution during the War of 1812.
“He was apparently wounded during the war,” Peterson explained. “After the war, he applied for a disability pension and got one, but not a large one, because it said he was disfigured but not disabled.”
Darling later became Marblehead’s first lighthouse keeper, living in isolation on Marblehead Neck for more than 25 years with supplies delivered only by boat.
Peterson found herself drawn into many unexpected rabbit holes — but none captivated her more than Darling’s story. It remains one of her favorites, and she’s eager to learn even more about him.
Her research also revealed stories of triumph and tragedy intertwined across the burial grounds. Old Burial Hill contains graves of an estimated 600 Revolutionary War soldiers, most unmarked, creating what Peterson describes as a silent monument to collective sacrifice. The cemetery also holds the remains of Joseph Brown, a free Black man who owned a popular tavern and fought in the Revolution.
One of her most poignant discoveries involved two young friends who drowned while working on a fishing schooner in Marblehead Harbor. Their shared gravestone in Harris Street Cemetery connects to an Ashley Bowen drawing depicting their massive funeral procession around the old townhouse.
“The whole town was very sad about this,” Peterson said. “They had this huge funeral for them.”
The book documents not just individual stories but broader cultural shifts. Peterson traces the evolution from colonial churchyards managed by churches to the 19th-century rural cemetery movement that created park-like spaces for public contemplation. Waterside Cemetery, established in 1859, exemplifies this transition with its 46-acre landscape designed for both the living and the dead.
Her research also explored how embalming became widespread as families sought to bring soldiers home, with President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train serving as a powerful demonstration of the technique’s effectiveness.
“That sort of turned the tide for people, making them feel like this was acceptable,” Peterson explained, noting how funeral parlors eventually replaced the tradition of families preparing bodies at home.
The book encompasses public cemeteries like Waterside and Harbor View, private family tombs including the recently threatened Harris Street Cemetery, and denominational grounds such as St. Michael’s Episcopal Churchyard and Star of the Sea Cemetery.
Peterson’s work extends beyond documentation to preservation advocacy. Her involvement with the Old Burial Hill Oversight Committee led to restoration projects funded by the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The success of that model inspired the creation of the Harris Street Cemeteries Oversight Committee to rescue neglected family burial sites.
Despite the book’s comprehensiveness, Peterson expresses characteristic humility.
“I feel like I could have done more. I should have done more, and you know, I ran out of time,” she reflected. “I think you always feel like that with a research project, because, in a way, it’s never done.”
Peterson also writes the Marblehead Chronicles column for the Current every other week. Her new book is available at a.co/d/2bBKCqM.
