Famous People Buried at Forest Hills Cemetery

FOREST HILLS CEMETERY IS A PLACE DEDICATED to memory. Here, it is possible to connect with the inspiring stories of people whose “lives well lived” reflect the rich and diverse history of New England. Artists and writers, entrepreneurs and inventors, social reformers and government leaders are buried here. The Forest Hills Educational Trust seeks to celebrate these individuals for their lives of creativity and accomplishment through walking tours and special programs.

A short list of some of the notable people buried or memorialized at Forest Hills Cemetery is below.

  • Poets e.e. cummings and Anne Sexton.
  • Playwright Eugene O’Neill and his wife Carlotta.
  • Sculptors Martin Milmore and Thomas Ridgeway Gould, and the husband-and-wife painters Philip Leslie Hale and Lilian Westcott Hale.
  • Abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, William Cooper Nell, and Lysander Spooner.
  • Composer Amy Beach, the first woman to have a symphony composed and published in America; Oliver Ditson, 19th century America’s most successful music publisher; Joseph “Wally” Walcott, whose Wally’s Jazz Cafe has presented Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughn, and Branford Marsalis; and Elma Lewis, cultural activist and educator.
  • Suffragette and abolitionist Lucy Stone, who was the first person cremated in New England, at what is now the Forest Hills Crematory.
  • Self-made millionaires and philanthropists Andrew Carney, George Robert White, and Eben Jordan.
  • Pioneering activists and professionals in medicine, women’s healthcare and women’s professional education, including Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, surgeon Dr. Susan Dimock, and America’s first trained nurse, Linda Richards.
  • Revolutionary war hero Doctor and Major General Joseph Warren, author of the Suffolk Resolves, and William Dawes, Jr., the first rider sent out by Joseph Warren before Paul Revere to mobilize the colonists and warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the British troops approaching Boston.
  • Francis Cabot Lowell, the textile magnate often called the Father of the Industrial Revolution, for whom the city of Lowell is named.
  • Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Emily Greene Balch.
  • Clockmaker Simon Willard, fountain pen inventor Lewis Waterman, and bicycle manufacturer and popularizer Albert Pope.

For additional listings of people of note buried at Forest Hills Cemetery, please refer to our detailed map of the cemetery which is available for viewing and download on our Visiting page and also available in print at the cemetery office. You may also read more about our permanent residents in the books we offer.

Do you have a suggestion of a resident buried here of whom we may not be aware? Your ideas and suggestions are welcome. Please contact us if you have a suggestion for a person of note.