Plans for the old and new joining for Prospect Hill Cemetery

Prospect Hill Cemetery to have columbarium. PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY The island’s sweeping Prospect Hill Cemetery, founded 200 years ago, holds a number of esteemed persons including acclaimed astronomer Maria Mitchell, Barker Burnell, a member of the nation’s 27th Congress who died in 1843 and is buried here with his wife Judith and daughter-in-law Lydia, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Karl Landsteiner, a summer resident and physiologist, and Francis Wright Davis, who invented power steering.

They are among scores of others such as whaling captains, merchants, artists, writers and educators, along with more common folk who made their lives on Nantucket and are being chronicled in an upcoming “coffee table” book called “Tuck’t In: A Walking Tour of Historic Prospect Hill Cemetery,” hoped to be published sometime this year by the non-profit Prospect Hill Cemetery Association, Inc.

Publication of that book, the first of several historical volumes conceived by the association for a cemetery series, is juxtaposed with a project honoring lives recently lost. Construction began last fall on an urn garden surrounding the flagpole visible from the cemetery’s Mount Vernon Street main entrance pillars, with tiered walls ending in a semi-circle to mark the grave sites of cremated remains. The design is by Carroll Associates, landscape architects based in Portland, Maine.

Jeff Morash, an association member and Prospect Hill’s superintendent, explained that the garden area will be landscaped with indigenous plants and bluestone walkways throughout the location. The solid walls, called columbaria, are being built from New England quarried granite to complement the cemetery’s existing stone markers. There will be 444 spaces where cast bronze plates may be mounted to personalize the placement of the deceased.

The garden, approximately 25 percent complete, is expected to be finished before Memorial Day. While people may already purchase the plaques, no actual burials or mounting of name plates will occur until the project is completed.

The urn garden will be mentioned in “Tuck’t In” as part of its overview of the cemetery’s history. Paula Lundy Levy, the book’s author and the association’s webmaster, database coordinator and cemetery historian, said the book’s text is currently being edited by part-time island resident and former English teacher Lenore Riccio. Eileen Powers of Javatime Design is its graphic designer. A publisher has not been chosen, but Levy said the cost for printing of this and subsequent books by the non-profit association will be covered from donations and grants.

“I tried to chronicle people using their own words from diaries and letters or who have contemporary people speaking about them,” Levy explained, noting that the book will include many photographs from the Nantucket Historical Association’s archives, new photos and images of historic documents pertaining to those profiled. “There are so many people — sometimes when I go over Lenore’s edits I think, ‘Oh, wow. I forgot I knew about that person’.”

The other, smaller walking tour books will be designed to be handheld. Those will detail various sections of the cemetery as well as highlight themed tours where artists, authors, poets, notable Nantucket women, whaling families and mariners are buried. All proceeds from book sales will be used for monument preservation, conservation, restoration and cemetery maintenance.

The book project is one that Levy finds thoroughly fascinating and rewarding, as well as educational. She recalled that when she and her husband Arthur moved here in 2001 they rented a house across from the cemetery and she often took her dog walking there.

“Little did I know that one day I’d be writing about it. Prospect Hill is so rich in history while still being a viable cemetery today,” she said. “I love Nantucket history; it’s wonderful to work on. It’s wonderful to get up every day and know what you’re going to work on is something that you love.” I