Our Regular Tour Season Begins Saturday

Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays
11:00am to 12:00pm
$10 or $5 for seniors and students

Join us for our inaugural 2016 season tour this Saturday, July 9, as we walk the grounds of the oldest historic landscape in Portland, Maine. Our trained guides cover the cemetery's history, prominent historical figures, and early gravestone art. We'd love to have you, and you can even purchase tickets before the tour! All funds go directly back into the cemetery's conservation and educational programs.

Stone Conservation Day

Saturday, July 9, 2016
8:30 am to 12:30 pm
Rain Date: Sunday, July 10

Join us on a cemetery adventure conserving and cleaning stones. We practice basic stone conservation, and all volunteers are welcome! 

Please wear long pants (or layers), sturdy shoes, and a hat. Your own gardening gloves are a bonus, but we have extras if you need them. 

Find how we do conservation! We have more dates available this summer. Learn how you, with the knowledge gained from this hands-on conservation day, can help us in Eastern Cemetery, or help improve the stones in your own local burial ground.

Subterranean Celebrity: James, Mary, Dorcas & Louisa Hopkins

Deaths: June 17, 1840; March 9, 1802; June 17, 1816; October 27, 1848

James Hopkins was born in England and became a lawyer and a District Deputy Grand Master in the Masonic Lodge. He married Mary Bagley in 1802, but she passed away weeks later. Almost 3 years later, he married Dorcas Tucker, and they had at least 2 girls while married for 11 years. After Dorcas died, he (at age 50) married Louisa.

All of their head and foot stones are rectangular grey slate, and are not fancy. They sit side by side in section F of the Eastern Cemetery. Mary and Dorcas share a stone, and their inscription is the most unusual of them all.

James D. Hopkins
Died June 17, 1840
AEt. 68.
+++

GOD hath withdrawn the spirits & here mingle the ashes
of the wives of JAMES D. HOPKINS.

MARY HOPKINS,
dau.r of John & Mary Bagley,
died March 9, 1802,
aged 24.

DORCAS HOPKINS,
dau.r of Daniel & Lydia Tucker,
died June 17, 1816,
aged 29.

A monumental stone is not the memorial of their virtues;
they are recorded in the heart of A HUSBAND.
+++

Louisa H. Hopkins
DIED
Oct. 27, 1848
AEt. 52.
+++

Thanks so much to Robert Hall who provided all of the information for the Hopkins family and to Martha Zimicki for her renderings of their gravestones.

You can suggest a subterranean celebrity! Just send an email—it doesn't take much to make a nice little story. An index of all of our Subterranean Celebrities is available.