Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery are a pair of separate cemeteries on Farewell and Warner Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Together they contain over 5,000 graves, including a colonial era slave cemetery and Jewish graves. The pair of cemeteries was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a single listing in 1974.
The Common Burial Ground dates to the 17th century and is owned by the city of Newport. It features an unparalleled collection of colonial era headstones including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the country. The predominantly African-American northern section of the cemetery is commonly referred to by local African-Americans as "God's Little Acre".
The Island Cemetery is a private cemetery started in the middle 19th century. Many members of Newport's most prominent families have been buried there over the years.
Famous quotes containing the words common, burying, ground, island and/or cemetery:
“We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”
—Book Of Common Prayer, The. The Burial of the Dead (1662)
“Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter ... decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For four hundred years the blacks of Haiti had yearned for peace. for three hundred years the island was spoken of as a paradise of riches and pleasures, but that was in reference to the whites to whom the spirit of the land gave welcome. Haiti has meant split blood and tears for blacks.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)