Directly across the street from Harvard Hall and between "the sentinel and the nun," by which O. W. Holmes, Sr., meant respectively the Unitarian and Episcopal churches, lies the Old Cambridge Burying Ground. It is one of the most distinctive of American graveyards. More people were buried in it before 1700 than in any other cemetery in the United States. But more important than these laurels is the fact that is tenants had the lion's share in the making of embryonic America. From 1635, when Cambridge was called New Town, until the clearing of the lot at Mt. Auburn, most of the population of this, the intellectual center of puritanism, were buried here. They were college professors, ministers, housewives, administrators, merchants, young students "of great hopes," soldiers, farmers and slaves.

Most of Harvard's early presidents, including the first one, Henry Dunster, are here. They are under low, flat, horizontal marble monuments from the upturned surfaces of which the long Latin texts have been nearly completely worn away after over two centuries of weather. Others include the early puritan minister Thomas Shephard, the painter Washington Allston, and the author Richard Henry Dana.

The piece of poetry which reappears most often is the line "The sweet remembrance of the just shall flourish when they sleep in dust." Its brevity must have been its biggest selling point. Various puritanical attitudes of life come out in this tombstone poetry.

The burying ground contains two anomalies Samuel McChord Crothers, a great Unitarian minister and essayist, is buried here by his own request, though he was not even born until after the graveyard had retired from active service. In a far corner, near where Garden Street and Massachusetts Avenue join, lies an ancient mile stone proclaiming on one side over the date 1734 that the distance to Boston is eight miles and on the other side over the date 1794 that it is two and a quarter miles. Obviously there had been some improvements in transportation across the Charles.

Since Holmes' time structures housing the Cambridge Electric Light Co. and the Church Street Garage have grown up on the nether limits of the burying ground, and a large Texaco gasoline sign stares down on it with almost sacrilegious familiarity, but this small plot has outlived many such indignities in its time. In 1700 the caretaker was allowed to pasture his sheep here and in more recent years, on Saturday mornings, it made an ideal wild west setting for dramatic gun play after the horse opera at the U.T. During the administration of Roosevelt II, however, measures were taken to protect it. Thirty-five thousand dollars were spent on repairs and it was put back under the care of the municipal government. An advisory committee made up for the most part of prominent Cambridge antiquarians assists the city officials. Now the gates are locked, the stones looked after, the grass is cut in the summer and next year they are planning to use weed killer.