Tales of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

It's spring!  A great time to explore Concord's beautiful, historic, and sacred park: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  The booklet "Obituaries of Concord Luminaries,"  published by Friends of Sleepy Hollow, presents interesting, original obituaries of the cemetery's most famous residents.  I'd like to tell you some fascinating details rarely covered in such documents, and introduce you to some of the lesser known but equally interesting folks buried here.

Walk with me in through Sleepy Hollow's New Hill Gate, the one closest to Concord Center. [Photo 1]  The gate has that name because this part of Sleepy Hollow was once called the New Hill Burying Ground.  It was established in 1823 when they were running out of room in the Old Hill Burying Ground, beside the building now housing Holy Family Parish. 

See the small building on your left?  In 1849 that was Concord's North Center Schoolhouse.  Later it became a chapel and served Concord's Episcopal congregation, before they built Trinity Church.  It was then the cemetery office, and now serves as the Concord Assessor's office.  On this side of the house, right behind the big oak, note the Dunbar gravestones. [Photo 2]  They mark the plot of Henry David Thoreau's grandparents. Though no sign says it, when Henry died in 1862 he was first buried in that plot, as were his father and brother, both named John, and his sister Helen.  In the 1870s, their remains were moved in "bone coffins" (caskets  just big enough for the deceaseds' bones) to the Thoreau family's new plot on Authors Ridge.

As we walk along the cemetery lane called Union Ave., notice the wall on our right separating the cemetery from Bedford St. [Photo 3]  The granite blocks forming the top layer of that wall, the capstones, were once part of the old county jail that was torn down in 1867. Henry was confined in that jail for one night for not paying his poll tax.  That experience led him to write his Essay on Civil Disobedience which, years later, was cited by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King when they practiced what Henry had taught.

But that's another story.  Today, let's follow Union Ave. up over the slight rise that marks the end of the Old Hill Burying Ground and down the other side into what was once the fairground of the Middlesex Agricultural Society.  They say that if you dig down a few feet over here in some places you'll encounter cinders, remnants of the old racetrack.  We'll bear left a few feet on Division Ave. to where it meets Vesper Circle.  See that dark stone near the junction, partly hidden by a bush?   [Photo 4]  It marks the Bush plot — Walter Meigs Bush and his wife, the pioneering Anne Rainsford French Bush (1878-1962).  Can you read what it says at the bottom:  "First woman Licensed to drive a motor vehicle in America."  [Photo 5]  That's Anne!  The word "America" in that epitaph no doubt meant the United States.  But it was probably true as well for all of North and South America.

Anne grew up in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a physician. Her dad had an early steam driven car called a locomobile that he maintained himself, taking it apart to clean and lubricate. Anne used to help him. He told her that, if she got good enough at the job, he'd let her drive the car. She did; and he did. The District of Columbia issued her a steam engineer's license, which entitled her to operate a "four-wheeled vehicle powered by steam or gas."

Later, when Anne married Walter Bush, she quit driving entirely and took up the traditional duties of a homemaker.  Years passed.  In 1952, when the American Automobile Association (AAA) was observing its 50th birthday, they invited Anne to Washington, D.C. to take part in the celebration.  She went, had tea with the president's wife, Bess Truman, and then fulfilled what Anne said was "a life-long dream":  she drove a fire engine up Pennsylvania Avenue.

Another interesting thing about Anne: she was the niece of Mary French, who married Daniel Chester French, one of America's greatest sculptors.  We'll talk more about Mr. French next time.

Harry Beyer, a licensed town guide, has lived and walked in Concord since 1966.