North Burial Ground

Historical Significance

The largest municipal cemetery in New England, the North Burial Ground in Providence, RI, dates from 1700.  Its 35,000 gravemarkers offer an eclectic array of funerary sculpture in a variety of materials, particularly slate and marble.  The burial ground is still actively used and holds over 200 burials each year.  Some of the burial ground’s notable residents include Edward Bannister (d. 1901), a well-known African-American painter who lived in Providence, Civil War General Alfred Nattee Duffie (d. 1880), Stephen Hopkins (d.1785), Rhode Island delegate to the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Horace Mann (d. 1859), the renowned political thinker, abolitionist, and reformer of the American public school system.

Conservation Treatment

• ŸSlate, marble, and granite treatments.
• Stone cleaning.
• ŸCrack injection with dispersed hydrated lime injection grout.
• ŸPatching of losses using Jahn patching compound.
• ŸFabrication of granite bases, in which the marble markers were inset, secured with lime mortar, and capped with lead to prevent further breakages at the burial line.
• ŸResetting of markers in leveled, gravel-lined beds.