Charter Street Burial Ground

• The Charter Street Burial Ground, started in 1637, also known as "Old Burying Point" or the "Charter Street Cemetery", is the oldest cemetery in Salem. Many early and famous Salem residents are buried here, such as John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem witch trials of 1692 and Samuel McIntire, Salem's great woodcarver. Another famous gravestone is of the only Mayflower passenger buried here, a Capt. Richard More.
• For lists of others who are buried here, see the links below.
• The Charter Street Cemetery inscriptions, transcribed by Jeanne Stella, are being published in The Essex Genealogist periodical, starting in 2016 and ongoing.
• In 2018 the cemetery will undergo a $600,000 landscape restoration. The oldest cemetery in Salem, over the years, the cemetery's stone dust main path has widened and is showing surface compaction. The scope of rehab calls for path-way upgrades and stabilization, major landscaping as well as fencing and in-ground lighting installations.
• In fiscal year 2016, a $90,000 Community Preservation Act project funded the preservation of 28 head-stones and eight box tombs.
• In Dec. 2018, a missing headstone of the famed Bowditch family returned to Salem after being found in a Scituate garage.
• In 2021, the City of Salem and the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) announce that the Museum’s historic Samuel Pickman House will be utilized by the City as a new Charter Street Cemetery Welcome Center when the cemetery reopens to the public. The cemetery is tentatively scheduled to reopen to the public on May 1st, subject to approval by the Salem Cemetery Commission. The reopening follows an extensive landscape renovation project that includes restoration of the cemetery’s cast iron fencing, wall stabilization, and the installation of a new pathway system, landscape material, benches, and perimeter lighting.

See Also

• Vertical File in Salem Collection - Cemeteries

• Vertical File in Salem Collection - Charter Street Burial Ground

• Be-witched in historic Salem Salem Chamber of Commerce, p. 9

• Find A Grave: Charter Street Cemetery Website

• Charter Street Cemetery List of buried.

• Inscriptions from the Charter Street burial ground, Salem, Massachusetts D. Perley, 1874

• Burying Point - 1637 Historical Markers Database

• Puritan City by Winwar, Frances, p. 85

• Our Silent Neighbors; a Study of Gravestones in the Olde Salem Area by B. Bouchard, p. 8-21

• Salem Charter Street Cemetery Sketchbook by Jeanne Stella

• Charter Street Cemetery Inscriptions of Salem Mass. by Jeanne Stella

• "Restoring the Burying Point; Tourist traffic leaves Salem's oldest cemetery looking its age" Salem News, Jun 20, 2017, p.1

• "Missing Bowditch gravestone found in Scituate" Salem News, Dec. 6, 2018, p. 1

• "Bowditch headstone returns to Salem" Salem News, Dec. 13, 2018, p. 1

• "Charter Street Cemetery to open soon, with bigger plans still forming" Salem News, Mar. 26, 2021

• If these stones could speak: The History and people of the Old Salem Burying Point D. Fury, 2021

• "Salem unveils new Welcome Center" Salem News, July 1, 2021