About this property
The Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery are a pair of separate cemeteries on Farewell and Warner Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Together they contain over 5,000 graves, including a colonial-era slave cemetery and Jewish graves. The pair of cemeteries was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a single listing in 1974. The Common Burial Ground was established in 1665 on land given to city of Newport by John Clarke. It features what is probably the largest number of colonial era headstones in a single cemetery, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States. The predominantly African-American northern section of the cemetery is commonly referred to by local African-Americans as "God's Little Acre". The Island Cemetery was established by the city in 1836, and transferred to the private Island Cemetery Corporation in 1848. Many members of Newport's most prominent families have been buried there over the years. Notable people buried there include Medal of Honor recipient Hazard Stevens, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, Commodore Matthew C. Perry and financier August Belmont. In 2016, three gravestones were discovered which had been lost for years. One stone, found in Pennsylvania, was a 12 x 24 marker for a 1-year-old child. The others were 1835 stones for a Newport woman, which were found in a Newport yard during a renovation. The recovered stones were reset in the Common Burying Ground in 2016 by the Newport Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission. In 2017, two more burial stones found in Pennsylvania, those of Violet and Duchess Quamino, were returned and restored. Duchess Quamino, a free Black woman formerly enslaved to William Ellery Channing, had been an active member of Newport's African community. === Prominent people buried in the Common Burial Ground === John Linscom Boss Jr. – United States Representative. Christopher Champlin – First Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island 1791-1794. Christopher G. Champlin – United States Representative 1797–1801, United States Senator 1809–11. John Cranston – Colonial Governor of Rhode Island. Samuel Cranston – Colonial Governor of Rhode Island. William Ellery – Signer of the Declaration of Independence and colonial Deputy Governor. James Franklin – Printer and brother of Benjamin Franklin. Ann Smith Franklin – Printer & publisher, wife/widow of James Franklin (1st woman U.S. newspaper editor) Prince Greene - Enslaved African-American who served as a soldier in the American Revolution. Ida Lewis (lighthouse keeper) – Heroine of the 19th Century. Recipient of the Gold Lifesaving Medal.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery listed on the National Register?
Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 1974.
What type of historic resource is Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery?
Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery is classified as a site in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery?
The period of significance for Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery is recorded as the listed era.
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