Introduction: Tour by Stop
Watch your step as you walk through the stones. Sunken spots, iron posts, small markers are all tripping hazards! Also, please never step backwards unless you double-check what you're stepping on first.
Eastern Cemetery Gates on Congress Street (full-size image of the gates on Flickr)
Welcome to the Eastern Cemetery, one of the oldest and best examples of colonial burying grounds in New England. Established in 1668, it was active for over 200 years and held the remains of more than 7,000. Today, about 3,000 gravestones survive in its 6 acres. The cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated by the City of Portland as an historic cemetery.
Today, the Eastern Cemetery offers a wonderful variety of gravestones memorializing the Portland area's residents—famous, infamous, rich, and poor. Special sections were set aside for Quakers, African-Americans, and Catholics.
We hope you enjoy this guide through Portland’s oldest historic site!
Continue to Stop 1: Dead House, City Tomb
From Congress Street, enter through the iron gates, and stop at the little white tool shed. You have reached Stop 1, the Dead House.
List of All Stops
Skip to a specific place in the tour:
- Introduction
- Stop 1: Dead House, City Tomb
- Stop 2: Alden Monument
- Stop 3: Pine Tree, Commemorative Boulder, Mary Green, Samuel Moodey
- Stop 4: Stephen Larrabee
- Stop 5: Proctor Children, Great Fire
- Stop 6: Stephen and Tabitha Longfellow
- Stop 7: Tombs of Captain Burrows, Captain Blyth, Lt. Waters (War of 1812)
- Stop 8: Wadsworth Monument, Adams Children
- Stop 9: African American Ground Overlook
- Stop 10: Quaker Ground
- Stop 11: Preble Monument, Field of Tombs
- Stop 12: Alonzo Stinson Monument, Strangers Ground