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:
“For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
MI, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation—”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Trying to conceal a crime is like burying a seed in the ground.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The cemetery isn’t really a place to make a statement.”
—Mary Elizabeth Baker, U.S. cemetery committee head. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 15 (June 13, 1988)