Mountain View Cemetery (1731)

Located on Boylston Street, the Mountain View Cemetery is the final resting place for many of the Town’s earliest and most notable residents. It is the town’s largest cemetery with over 10,000 interments, the earliest of which were many years before the Revolutionary War.

When it incorporated in 1727, the town of Shrewsbury was required under Crown Law to provide a “burying ground” for its residents. In 1730, the town voted to make the cemetery official, clearing the land and fencing it in. The cemetery was situated on what was called Meeting House Hill Land. Now called “Old Corner” (Sections 1-9 on the Cemetery map), the land is part of Shrewsbury’s Historic District and is on the National Register of Historic Places. You can find it just behind the First Congregational Church.

Recently the town has sought grants to clean up the older gravestones in the Historic District that have fallen over or need repair.

Some of the wonderful historic gravestones can be viewed online among the Farber Gravestone Collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

To find the grave of a particular person, you can visit the Find A Grave website for numerous records from the Mountain View Cemetery.