King's Chapel & King's Chapel Burying Ground Audio Guide

King's Chapel: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to King's Chapel & King's Chapel Burying Ground

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to King's Chapel highlights Welcome to King's Chapel & King's Chapel Burying Ground and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Welcome to one of the most layered corners of Boston. You are on Tremont Street, near where it meets School Street, standing beside a stone church and the oldest graveyard in the city. Both are stops on the Freedom Trail, and together they pack nearly four centuries of colonial, revolutionary and religious history into a few steps. Here is a detail that surprises many visitors. The burying ground came first. It was founded in 1630 as the first graveyard in Boston proper, and for 30 years, from 1630 to 1660, it was the only burial site in town. The chapel arrived later, squeezed onto a corner of land that was already full of Puritan graves. As we walk through this guide, we will look at the graveyard and the people resting in it, then at the chapel's elegant Georgian architecture, and finally at how a church built for the Crown became the first Unitarian congregation in the nation. The names can be confusing, so keep this in mind: despite what it is called, the burying ground has always belonged to the city, not to the church.

2. 02

   The Oldest Graveyard in Boston

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to King's Chapel highlights The Oldest Graveyard in Boston and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Let's start with the ground beneath your feet. According to custom, the first person buried here was Isaac Johnson, an early settler whose estate is said to have included this land. From that first burial the graveyard grew, and it became the final resting place of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and of Mary Chilton, remembered by tradition as the first woman to step ashore from the Mayflower. You will also find William Dawes, the patriot sent to ride to Lexington and Concord alongside Paul Revere. The numbers tell a story of crowding. A survey in 1985 counted 586 surviving grave markers, yet because so many early burials were never marked, the number of people interred here is believed to be well over 1,000. You may also notice how tidy the stones look. A Boston resident wrote in 1855 that he had watched the superintendent rearrange the headstones into neat rows and columns without moving the remains beneath them. So the orderly rows you see may not mark where each person actually lies. At the back of the grounds stands a large tomb that was originally used to store bodies temporarily. In 1838 it was converted into a children's tomb.

3. 03

   Stones That Speak: Carvings and Stories

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to King's Chapel highlights Stones That Speak: Carvings and Stories and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Now look closely at the stones themselves, because they are works of art. Near the front of the burying ground is the marker of Joseph Tapping, where a skeleton and Father Time battle over the inevitability of death. It has been called possibly the most beautiful headstone in Boston. The carvers were craftsmen working in Boston and the surrounding region, and their stones are original seventeenth and eighteenth century artifacts. If you compare carvings, you may spot a change over time. Historians of American material culture note that on later eighteenth century stones, the carved faces gradually shift from skull-like forms toward more angelic visages, a change they link to shifting religious sensibilities in the region. Literature also has a claim here. The National Park Service notes a tradition that one gravestone in this burying ground inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter. In the early nineteenth century, when landscaped cemeteries outside cities were becoming the public parks of their day, efforts were made to beautify urban burying grounds like this one. Footpaths, an ornamental cast iron fence and various plantings were added, which is part of why a walk here feels less like a cemetery visit and more like a stroll through a small, quiet park.

4. 04

   A Georgian Church with a Turbulent Past

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to King's Chapel highlights A Georgian Church with a Turbulent Past and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Turn your attention to the chapel. Its story begins in the late 1680s, when the royal governor, Andros, took a portion of the burying ground to build the town's first Anglican church. In a Puritan town, that was a bold move, and the land already held graves. The building you see today was designed by Peter Harrison in 1749 for Boston's first Anglican congregation. The interior is considered one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in North America, and the church was completed in 1754. The bell, forged in England in 1772, cracked in 1814. Paul Revere recast it in 1816, and it still rings to summon worshippers. The Revolution changed everything. The congregation was a stronghold of Loyalist opposition, and most of its members left for England and Nova Scotia in 1776. The church's name was briefly changed to Stone Chapel. Those who remained turned to a new path. Under the minister James Freeman, who revised the Book of Common Prayer to reflect the growing Unitarian movement, King's Chapel became Unitarian in the 1780s. It became the nation's first Unitarian congregation, and it remains an independent congregation affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to King's Chapel highlights Before You Head Off and points out what to notice during your visit.

   As you linger, notice the contrast that makes this place so special: a granite church rising right beside slate gravestones that are older than the church itself. Even the name carries a small puzzle, since for many years the burying ground was known simply as the Chapel Burying Ground because of its closeness to the church, while it has always remained in the city's hands. The Historic Burying Grounds Initiative manages 16 burying grounds across Boston, so this is one chapter in a much larger story of how the city remembers its dead. Before you move on along the Freedom Trail, try reading a few epitaphs, comparing the carved faces on different stones, and listening for the bell that Paul Revere recast. Which stone will pull you in first?