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A few weeks ago I heard a book calling out to me as I strolled haplessly through a Barnes and Noble. It was titled Over my Dead Body and it was all about the evolution of the garden cemeteries starting in Paris and working their way over here to the United States. It was a very informative (and often funny) read which mentioned a lot of cemeteries here in New England, one of which I’d never been to before.
So that’s how I ended up at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord Massachusetts last week. It’s the home of Author’s Ridge which is where Lousia May Alcott author of Little Women, Henry David Thoreau author of Walden or Life in the Woods, Ralph Waldo Emmerson the poet, essayist, and philosopher, and Nathaniel Hawthorne the author of the Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables are all buried quite close to each other.

Honestly it was weird I didn’t know about this place before seeing as I am constantly enamored with authors, cemeteries, and history. Still. Sleepy Hollow is a large cemetery with clearly marked signs leading to Author’s Ridge and scant parking so keep that in mind if you visit.

So how did all these icons of their era end up buried in a row? Simple, they weren’t. Back in the day the cemetery more or less bought their remains so they could put them here to drive-up tourism. Capitalism at its finest. Nothing is off limits. Not even celebrity corpses. But it worked! And people are STILL flocking here. Although oddly enough there were remarkably few pennies. Alcott had the most. I wonder if they weren’t being cleaned up or if this bunch just wouldn’t be fond of having pennies left for them. They seem the type…

I’d been accidentally stalking the life of Lousia May Alcott for some time weaving in and out of the strange and wonderful landmarks they had something to do with and I have been coming to learn they were a fascinating individual, possibly even a trans or non-binary icon as in their own words they declared, “‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body.” And they liked to be referred to as gentleman, like a boss! They were buried in a family plot with their author mother Abigail May Alcott and author sisters Elizabeth Sewell Alcott and Abigail May Alcott Nieriker. Their last remaining sister wasn’t a writer but she was inspiration for Meg in Little Women and she also resides in the family plot. Her name was Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. Pretty hard-hitting literary family there.

Admittedly I don’t know much about Emerson, he’s flown under my radar for some reason. Though I did previously visit the former resting spot of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin in the woods aside Walden Pond. I could appreciate his deep and intense need to be one with the wilderness. However, my knee jerk reaction since childhood was to not have any real fondness for Nathaniel Hawthorne. I decided at 12 he was whiny, and my opinion has only gotten bleaker with age. He wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables which is a real place and a delight to visit. He’s buried with his likely more talented writer and artist wife Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthrone who was relocated from her original burial in London in 2006! THAT POOR DEAR.

I will note now there are other authors buried here who are not on author’s ridge. They include but may not be limited to:

• Novelist, poet, and screenwriter Millen Brand known for his 1937 novel The Outward Room and his 1948 screenplay The Snake Pit.
• Prominent transcendentalist, poet, and dear friend of Thoreau: William Ellery Channing whose books include “The Woodsman” (1849), “Near Home” (1858), and “The Wanderer” (1871)
• Intrepid journalist Irene Agnes Dolores Corbally Kuhn who was the first woman to broadcast on the radio in China and whose career spanned a great many interesting topics from interviewing Charlie Chaplin and Margaret Sanger to covering the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
• Robin Moore – the author of The Green Berets and The French Connection
• Franklin Benjamin Sanborne – Writer and one of the “Secret Six” who funded John Brown’s Raid on Harper Ferry sparking the Civil War. Gotta love a trouble maker!
• Margaret Sidney – Children’s book author of The Little Peppers and How They Grew series under a penname.

Not be outdone there are other people of historical note here. In fact many of them are written up on a board near the entrance of the cemetery that also has a little map and I think a QR code for an audio tour. We decided to wander around like cracked out squirrels looking for whatever took our interest in any particular second weaving in and out of some areas several times, talking to other lost cemetery goers, and getting distracted by beautiful monuments and really ornate slate stones. So much diversity here!

As we wandered we found slates with ornate carvings – sometimes whole family crests, as well as a number of modern stones that had the deceased’s signature on them. I’ve never seen either of these before or a slab of green granite being used instead of marble. There was also Edward Nealy’s memorial which was an old indigenous mortar being currently used as birdbath. A slate stone commemorating a woman who was a teenager when the British came into the tavern she lived atop of and announced their occupation of the colonies. There was even a few Asian stones with characters on them but my two favorites were a fairly recent burial who had A TON of rocks set on top of his stone. He must have been loved by SO MANY people to have acquired that many rocks! On the complete opposite side of the spectrum I found a husband and wife drama from the 1800’s. They were in a family plot and the husband had practically his whole obituary on his stone – totally mental amount of words and aside him his wife had a matching stone that literally only ready her name, date of birth, and date of death. WOW, what happened there?! Upon closer inspection she didn’t have the same surname so I am guessing she remarried after her husband died and then came back to be buried awkwardly in the family plot. Ooooo the scandal!

But I suppose I should get back to the other famous people buried here… My favorite I think was a very unassuming one. Her name was Anne Rainsford French Bush who was the first woman to get a driver’s license! I left her a penny (as there were none there and if I am thankful for anything in this life it’s that I, as the owner of a pair of tits and a twat, have the freedom to drive a car. VERY UNDERATED RIGHT.) Not to be outdone there was also Katherine K Davis who wrote the lyrics for The Little Drummer Boy. Her stone was the hardest to find as it was a flat ground level stone and there were soooooo many ground hornets in the area. Thousands. I tried taking a photo but they were too small to pick up. You’ll just have to believe me this was the biggest swarm of ground hornets I have ever seen in my life. This cemetery is known for bird watching as migrating birds seem to love it here – I suspect many will get eaten by them in a month or two.

Daniel Chester French, the sculptor responsible for the seated Lincoln in Washing DC also shares a residence here with the other authors and artists. And in a quieter but no less important role we also found Mary Lemnist Titcomb – the creator of the first bookwagon (or bookmobile,) Elizabeth Palmer Peabody who helped create the kindergarten system in the US, William Monroe Spencer – the first man in America to manufacture graphite pencils, and Ephraim Wales Bull – who bred the first Concord grapes, and Marc and Emily Daniels – a married couple working in television as a director and camera coordinator respectively. Marc’s resume is impressive including episodes of I Love Lucy, Hogans Heros, and Star Trek and Emily was one of the first women to work behind the scenes with the cameras on shows such as I Love Lucy. Their stones were the only ones we did not find. I don’t know where they were hiding but we looked a good long time for them – with a terrible map, a confused GPS, and a broken gut instinct.

We didn’t bother to try and find the oodles of politicians and famous gun makers. Suffice to say we’re both a little weary of such things at the moment.

All and all this cemetery has soooo many historically interesting people, especially women of note as well as authors. It was on some beautiful grounds and aside from the lack of parking and the thousands of hornets it was actually really pleasant! I would highly suggest it to any cemetery or literary lover.