Heywood says the records are “fuzzy.”

But on Feb. 11, 1836, the Corporation would enlist the help of 10 benefactors to purchase the two-thirds of Harvard Hill that had not been donated by Shattuck. This cost came to $1,045.20.

According to Heywood, Harvard Hill is one of the “seven hills of Mount Auburn”—an allusion to the Seven Hills of Rome.

“People [then] were eager to inherit the mantle of civilization,” she says.

THE SLEEP

In the center of the land given to the University by Shattuck lies a huge sarcophagus-shaped tomb engraved with now-faded words of praise for the first law professor at Harvard, who was also the first person to be interred at Harvard Hill. According to Corporation records, Royall Professor of Law John Hooker Ashmun, Class of 1818, was buried on May 1, 1833.

“He did more sick, than others in health. He was fit to teach at an age when common men are beginning to learn, and his few years bore the fruit of long life,” the grave reads.

Ashmun was 33 years old when he died. Yet, he is the eldest of the first 10 people to be memorialized at the plot.

Two of them—Edward C. Mussey and William H. Cowan—were students who drowned in the Charles River, according to the Boston Almanac For The Year 1848.

Heywood says a college plot was a “necessity” since students would often die far from their homes. “If you died in the 1830s, there was no embalming,” she says, adding that the University could offer an “accommodation” in Cambridge.

Cowan, for instance, hailed from Louisiana.

Most of the early grave stones at Harvard Hill are for young professors or students.

“It didn’t have a lot of customers early on because Harvard people had their own cemetery lots,” Gomes says.

By the late 1850s, the 5,280 sq. ft. plot was falling into disrepair.

“As the lot contains no less than thirteen monuments—one to President [John T.] Kirkland, one to Professor Ashmun, whose remains are interred beneath and 11 others to instructors or to students of the College, it would seem that some steps should be taken to improve its appearance,” wrote W.G. Stearns on Oct. 23, 1856 on behalf of the superintendent of Mount Auburn Cemetery, who complained about a path overgrown with grass and the lack of a boundary around the plot.