Although records show that posts were eventually set up around Harvard Hill, there were still complaints in the early 20th century that the plot was not receiving adequate care.

“In 1909 the Cemetery received $275 the income of which was to be applied to the repair of the lot. The sum is wholly inadequate to the needs, but it has been used as far as it will go,” the Harvard Alumni Bulletin reported in April 1919. “Records at the cemetery show that interments there have never been frequent; three was the greatest number in a year, and fifteen years once elapsed without any.”

Little did the author know that over the next 80 years, only four people would be buried on Harvard Hill.

THE RESURRECTION

It was Gomes who would indirectly revive interest in the Harvard-owned plots in 1992.

He says he learned about Harvard Hill while taking care of the funeral arrangements of a sick friend, former Secretary to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences John R. Marquand, who also served as senior tutor of Dudley House.

Gomes says Marquand wanted to be buried in a casket, which posed problems at Mount Auburn because of limited space.

“They said, ‘Well the only place over which we don’t have any control over here is Harvard Hill. You can do anything you want to do up there,’” Gomes says. “I took my old friend to look at it. He picked the spot. It faces the College. Right from that stone you can see through the trees [to] Memorial Church.”

Gomes says Marquand’s large funeral introduced Harvard Hill to faculty members who had never heard of it.

“People began to hear...You can be buried up there if you’re at Harvard, for next to nothing,” Gomes says.

The funeral might have triggered a series of inquiries about the plot, since the Corporation decided only a few years after Marquand’s death to take steps to ensure that the Hill would not be overcrowded with graves.

“Recognizing that space at ‘Harvard Hill’ is inevitably limited, in the early 1990s the cemetery administration advised the Corporation to plan for the site’s future use,” University spokesperson Joe Wrinn writes in an e-mail.

He says that to save space, the Corporation decided to limit coffin burials, except when the person was opposed to cremation.

“They were terrified that there would be lots of stones,” Gomes says.

According to Wrinn, the Corporation erected a monument to “provide an appropriate memorial in cases of urn burials.”