Author of the Suffolk Resolves

Dr. Joseph Warren was a noted physician, Revolutionary War general and an ardent Son of Liberty. He was the son of Joseph and Mary Stevens Warren who lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts and had a large farm on what is now Warren Street. Dr. Joseph Warren was graduated from Harvard in 1759 and studied medicine with James Lloyd, opening his own medical practice in 1764. The same year he married Elizabeth Hooton and they would be the parents of Joseph, Richard, Elizabeth, and Mary Warren. His beloved wife, Elizabeth Hooton Warren, died in 1773, leaving him with young children to raise. In the early 1770s, he developed a close relationship with fellow patriots Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and he was one of the original members of the patriotic organization, the Sons of Liberty. After the Boston Massacre, he was said to be at every town meeting, arguing for the rights of Americans, and in 1772 he made a speech for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Warren wrote the Suffolk Resolves, which said that the citizens of Massachusetts would create a militia to protect the citizens, and that if General Thomas Gage. who was then Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts, was to arrest anyone for political reasons, the citizens militia would retaliate by seizing crown officials as hostages. The Suffolk Resolves were signed at the Milton Village home of patriot Daniel Vose and then carried by Paul Revere on horseback to Philadelphia where they were accepted with great acclaim by the First Continental Congress, which directed that the colonies would support Massachusetts. On April 18, 1775, Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes by horseback to warn patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as call out the citizens' militia, that the British Army was marching from Boston to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize arms and rebels. Warren was chosen the Provincial President and on June 14 he was chosen as the second Major General of Massachusetts Militia. At the Battle of Bunker Hill he led the militia and while rallying them during one of the British advances on the hill, he was killed when a musket ball hit him in the back of the head, and died instantly. After the battle, he was removed from Bunker Hill and reinterred in the Minot Family tomb in the Granary Burial Ground, later being moved to the Warren Crypt at St Paul's Cathedral on Tremont Street in Boston. He was reinterred in the Warren Family Lot on Mount Warren in Forest Hills Cemetery, where family members were reinterred from the Eustis Street Burial Ground in Roxbury, their slate headstones encircling a huge boulder of Roxbury puddingstone.

November 15th Lecture and Book Signing

The trustees of Forest Hills Cemetery and the trustees of the Forest Hills Educational Trust cordially invite you to join Anthony M. Sammarco – the author of more than 50 books on local history – as he unveils his latest title for Images of America: Forest Hills Cemetery.

A Book Party, Signing & Slide Lecture, co-sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society is on Sunday, November 15th @ 4:00 PM, at Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Jamaica Plain.

Crammed with historic photographs, this fascinating “Who’s Who” of Victorian Boston introduces you to the financiers, industrialists, artists, radicals and revolutionaries buried in Boston’s premier cemetery. Find out “who’s in the book!” Purchase your own copy hot off the presses and have it signed by the author. $15/$10 Trust and JP Historical Society members.

If you support the the Trust’s education programs at this event by joining as a $100 Patron Member, we will thank you with a complimentary copy of Anthony M. Sammarco’s book

Forest Hills Cemetery as well as reduced admission!

The Soul of Milton Hill

Richard H. Lufkin (1851-1922) was the inventor in 1877 of the vamp-folding machine that was to revolutionize the American shoe industry. A diploma from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association stated that this “is a well-known and meritorious machine and is standard among shoe manufacturers. It turns the edges of leather and cloth for vamps or linings of shoe perfectly, making a superior finish indispensable in a nice fitted shoe. It is unrivalled and is in use in all parts of the country and also abroad.” This likeness of Lufkin, complete with his 22-pound vamp-folding machine, is in stained glass in his mausoleum. The Lufkin Mausoleum is prominently sited on Summit Circle on Milton Hill and was erected in 1928; the mausoleum serves not just as a memorial, but as a place of burial. Above the entrance and carved in enduring granite is the legend “The inventor of the first Vamp Folding Machine” with a three dimensional carving of the device with the patent date of 1877.

Jenney Oil & Gasoline: Fueling Boston

Bernard Jenney (1827-1918) began the Jenney Manufacturing Company with his brother Francis H. Jenney in 1861; in 1812 their father Stephen Jenney had founded Jenney Oil Company in Boston as a kerosene, coal and whale oil concern. The Jenney bothers initially manufactured burning fluids, a mixture of camphene and alcohol, and after 1856 dealt exclusively in the production and distribution of petroleum. It was said that by the early twentieth century the works of Jenney Manufacturing Company in City Point, South Boston had a capacity of 500 barrels of oil a day. Jenney auto oil and gasoline became a major supplier by the time of 1920 and was a merged into Cities Service about 1965 and the Jenney name was ignobly replaced by Citgo. The Jenney family monument is on Carnation Path.

Flier of the "Black Horse" Flag

William Fletcher Weld (1800-1881) was a shipping magnate during the golden age of sail. Weld entered the shipping trade that had enriched his father, William Gordon Weld. By 1833, Weld had made enough money to commission "The Senator", the largest ship of her time. Weld eventually became one of the most successful merchant ship owners in America, and he operated fifty one sailing vessels and ten steamers. His fleet sailed under the name and symbol of the "Black Horse Flag". He later invested in real estate and in railroad expansion. Weld multiplied his family's fortune into a huge legacy for his descendants and the public, donating Weld Hall at Harvard in memory of his brother Stephen Minot Weld (1806-1867.) The Weld Family Lot is on Linden Avenue and is marked by an octagonal white marble Gothic spire with shields along the base for each of the family members’ names interred here. Among them are William F. Weld’s first wife Mary Perez Bryant Weld (1804-1836) and his second wife Isabella M. Walker Weld (1812-1906.)

The Forest Hills Educational Trust is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to preserve, enhance, interpret and celebrate Forest Hills Cemetery. The Trust organizes a variety of programs inspired by the Cemetery’s unique environment – walking tours, concerts, poetry readings, a summer camp program, and adventurous exhibitions of contemporary art as well as ceremonies of remembrance. These activities are designed to invite the community to explore one of the city’s treasures. At first, many people are surprised to find so much happening in a cemetery. However, they quickly realize that Forest Hills is an extraordinary resource, a place to experience art, nature, and history as well as a tranquil sanctuary for reflection and remembrance

The Trust’s expert tour guides – many of them volunteers – give visitors a glimpse of the history of Boston through the stories of the people buried at Forest Hills. Other tours reveal the meaning of the symbols carved in stone memorials – oak leaves for strength, ivy for a faithful nature – and stop at bronze and marble sculpture by the most eminent artists of the 19th and early 20th century; the Trust raises funds to engage conservators every year to care for some of these endangered masterpieces, which are damaged by pollution and New England weather. The Lantern Festival and a traditional Day of the Dead are major community events that draw thousands every year; the beauty and spirituality of Forest Hills make it an inspiring setting to gather and celebrate the memory of family and friends. The Trust’s exhibitions of contemporary art offer new ways to think about age-old themes of family, ancestors, nature, remembrance, the cycles of life, and the world of the spirits. These programs are extremely innovative and have become a national model; however, the Trust is working to restore the original vision of the Cemetery as a destination, a welcoming place for the living as well as an eternal home for the dead.

The Creator of Forest Hills Cemetery

In the creation of Forest Hills, General Henry A.S. Dearborn with his own hand “marked out the winding avenues and shaded paths, observing how each should reveal some beauty while making available the gentle slopes or the rugged steeps as resting places for the dead…He modeled the imposing gateway at the principal entrance; he projected the chief adornments, and in a word, he stamped his own idea upon the cemetery in all the varied forms with which art has developed and increased the beauties of nature, an untiring industry, and a pious regard for the claims of the dead. Hardly was there a sign that he even desired to associate his name so intimately with the sacred shades of Forest Hills… though such an ambition were no unworthy one. But he labored rather for the love of his work, for the honor of the dead and the solace of the living.” In some ways, Victorians believed that “nature offered special keys for unlocking the mysteries of life and death.” In essence, Forest Hills Cemetery began in 1848 with what was then “a radical plan for burial and commemoration that linked nature, landscape design, and horticulture with art and architecture.”

Calm woodland shade! We here would lay
The ashes of our loved away;
And come at length ourselves to sleep,
Where thou wilt peaceful vigil keep.

from a Hymn composed by the Reverend C.H. Fay and sung at the consecration of Forest Hills Cemetery on June 28, 1848