Park Street Cemetery in Florence, Massachusetts

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Get directions Florence, Massachusetts, USA

Coordinates: 42.33453, -72.67390
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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The cemetery is about one/tenth of a mile from Rte 9. There is only one entrance on Park Street. Parking is on the road inside the cemetery, on Park Street or on Meadow Street. The cemetery is not open for vehicular traffic during the winter.

Contact: City of Northampton Cemetery Division
Office located at Spring Grove Cemetery, 300 North Maple Street, Florence, MA 01062 (413)587-1577

According to Sheffield's History of Florence:
"Soon after 1820 Josiah White, the oil-maker, gave the town a little plot of land for a cemetery, and in 1825 the first burial Betsy Howewas made there. This plot was the northeast corner of the present Park street cemetery, and the original gift included the land on which the North schoolhouse was afterwards built [current location of the Florence War Memorial]. During the fifties it was seen that a larger burial ground would soon be required, and on May 4, 1858, the town paid Mr. A.P. Critchlow seventy-five dollars for enough land to make the lot nearly square."

In 1880, J.D. Atkins planned to construct a family tomb on the family lot originally owned by D.G. Littlefield. Mr. Littlefield removed the remains (article does not say to where). Mr. Atkins generously allowed the tomb to be used as a temporary depository for the remains of the deceased while the ground was too frozen for a burial. It was located in the area of the current flagpole.

Many of the founders and members of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI) are buried here. Active abolitionists, including both conductors and passengers on the Underground Railroad, are buried here.

4 of the 9 zinc markers in Northampton are in this cemetery.