Maple Street Cemetery - Adams, MA
Posted by: 
neoc1
N 42° 37.531 W 073° 07.294
18T E 654036 N 4720941
The historic Maple Street Cemetery is located on Maple Street west of Route 8 near the downtown business district of Adams, MA.
Waymark Code: WM13974
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 10/17/2020
Views: 0
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Maple Street Cemetery is the oldest public cemetery in Adams, MA. It was established around 1767 by the Quaker community living in Adams. The Quakers establish their meetinghouse on what is now the far western end of the cemetery and buried their dead in unmarked graves south of the meetinghouse. The town of Adams then established a separate five acre cemetery, called Mount Vernon, at the highest point in the area north of the Meetinghouse around 1800.
In 1859, the Town of Adams purchased the land separating the two original cemeteries to create the present day Maple Street Cemetery. In 1869 civil engineer Charles F. Sayles created a design for the newly formed 16 acre cemetery. He preserved the existing burial grounds and joined them together into a single cemetery on along a set of long east-west roads between the circular entryway called Memorial Circle on the south east side and the original cemeteries on the high points to the west. A system of cross lanes run north-south with burial areas between the roads and the lanes. Currently there are over 4,000 interments in the cemetery.
Maple Street Cemetery is noted for the remarkable beauty of its setting amid the rolling Berkshire Mountains. There are views of downtown Adams to the east and Mt. Greylock, the tallest peak in Massachusetts, to the west.
Points of interest in the cemetery include the Quaker Meetinghouse on the south west hilltop, a plaque honoring Quakers, who despite their pacifist views, fought in the American Revolutionary War, located on a large rock outcrop east of the Meetinghouse, and a Civil War monument located at Memorial Circle.
On June 2, 2004, Maple Street Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.