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.
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—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“The earth, that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb.
What is her burying grave, that is her womb.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Edward Herbert (1583–1648)
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“I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)