While in New Haven CT this week I visited the Grove Street Cemetery burial place of Eli Whitney!
The Grove Street Cemetery, the first chartered burial ground in the United States, succeeded the previous common burial site, the New Haven Green. After severe yellow fever epidemics in 1794 and 1795 the Green, which held perhaps as many as 5,000 burials, was simply too crowded to continue as the chief burial ground. ln 1796 a group of New Haven citizens led by U.S, Senator James Hillhouse planned a new cemetery on a location at the edge of town. Their efforts were officially recognized in October, 1797 when the State of Connecticut incorporated the cemetery as The New Burying Ground in New Haven. The first burial, that of Martha Townsend, took place on November 9, 1797. Among the internationally renowned persons interred here are Eli Whitney, inventor; Noah Webster, lexicographer; Josiah Willard Gibbs, Jr., scientist; Lyman Beecher, abolitionist and prohibitionist; O.C. Marsh, paleontologist and Lars Onsager, Nobel Prize winner.
For more vist: http://www.grovestreetcemetery.org
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