First Burial Ground, Woburn*, Massachusetts

After getting lunch and driving directions from the super cute Boston accent-having waiter - I could seriously move to New England just to pick that accent up - Mom and I drove around Woburn until we found our ancestor's cemetery. Lieutenant Matthew Johnson, a native of England, emigrated to Woburn, Massachusetts, was taxed as a resident in 1666, died and was buried in 1696, which blows my mind - some of my people were here in America at least a century before the Revolutionary War began.

This was fun: a woman on the sidewalk, seeing our rental car, with California plates, sang "California, here I come..." to us as we drove down the street in Woburn. Yes, the tourists are here. I haven't traveled much, so being asked "Where are you ladies from?" whenever our not-Boston accents made an appearance never lost its novelty.

This was a cemetery experience like nothing I'd ever had before. First Burial Ground was probably once part of a lovely community, and it's not that Woburn isn't lovely, but the cemetery is right in the middle of an urban area with a 7-11 store and rundown apartments across the street. I'm used to the closed off, landscaped, respected grandeur of Park Hill and Willamette. Of course no one has been buried in First Burial Ground for probably two centuries, so no close descendants are alive to care for the graves - and pre-Revolutionary cemeteries are so common around here, people probably aren't in awe of them.

We looked, and looked, and looked for a long time, trying to find our grandfather Matthew Johnson's headstone. It's not a big cemetery and many of the headstones have fallen prey to the elements or vandals, so we didn't have many to search, but we made the rounds two or three times and still couldn't find what we were looking for. Mom and I were disappointed, but I'm very glad that some sweet soul grabbed a picture of Matthew's headstone a few years ago, before it was lost.

Photo by Fred Rose

Many of these very thin, fragile headstones have the same design, with an extremely primitive-looking skull surrounded by wings carved into the top. I also love the lettering, and the paragraph style epitaphs.

What an absolutely cool experience.

*pronounced WOO-burn. Now you too can sound like a Massachusetts-er.