Howard Street Cemetery
The Howard Street cemetery (once called Branch Street cemetery), established in 1801, is located next to the old Salem Jail in downtown Salem.
It was renamed Howard Street cemetery after John Howard from Marblehead, a soldier in the Revolutionary War who died in 1828. After his death the street and cemetery were renamed in his honor.
Some of the famous people buried there are Col. Samuel Carlton, who was with Washington at Valley Forge, and William Browne, commander of the ship Brutus, which went down in a shipwreck off Cape Cod. There are also five Revolutionary War soldiers and 17 sea captains buried there.
A portion of the cemetery was dedicated to Salem's African American population. One of the more prominent residents of the African American community to be buried there was Prince Farmer. A former cook on the vessel George, Farmer opened his own business as an oyster dealer. He died in 1852.
The last person buried there was in 1953.
Jeanne Stella's Howard Street cemetery inscriptions have been reproduced in the Essex Society of Genealogists running from Nov. 2014-Feb. 2016.
Epoch Preservation is trying to preserve the head stones here that belong to the city's early African-American community. The work is starting in fall 2021 to improve the cemetery.
See Also
- Salem Room Vertical File - Cemeteries
- Howard Street Cemetery Rootsweb
- Howard Street Cemetery Inscriptions, 1801-1852 by Jeanne Stella
- Venus Rising Streets of Salem blog
- "Volunteer catalogs obscure Salem cemetery", Salem Evening News, Aug. 30, 2000. p. A1
- "Howard Street had varied history" (letters to the editor) Salem News, Jan. 11, 2016, p. 7
- "Preserving local history: effort aimed at restoring gravestones of Salem abolitionists." Salem News, Aug. 26, 2021
