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Mount Auburn and the Black Family
There are very few things at Woodlawn that can be positively linked to specific women who lived there. Fortunately, Frances H. Wood, later Mrs. John Black, wrote her name on the inside cover of a small guide book titled, “Mount Auburn Map and Catalogue” (image above). Frances, John's second wife, lived at the Black House for 22 years.
Had Frances not signed the guide book, you could imagine that the book belonged to John Black for he wrote in his travel diary on August 12, 1844, “Went to Mt. Auburn – saw nothing there that suited my taste.” His lack of enthusiasm that day was probably not regarding the cemetery-park itself, but rather his interest in designing and building a tomb for himself and family at Woodlawn. We know that Frances occasionally traveled to Boston and likely explored Mount Auburn with friends and family and may have purchased the guide on one of her visits.
Mount Auburn Cemetery became an important place for the second and third generations of the Black family. In 1880, George Nixon Black Sr. purchase burial lot #4653. He, his wife, and their three adult children are buried there under a massive white pine tree on Eagle Avenue. Frances is buried in Wiscasset, next to her first husband.
Founded by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1831 as a non-sectarian burial ground, Mount Auburn Cemetery included an experimental garden and arboretum that would also be a place of quiet and beauty for public enjoyment. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts with 72 acres, Mount Auburn eventually expanded to include 170 acres of winding roads that traversed a rolling landscape of ponds, small chapels, and stone memorials. According to the cemetery website there are now over 93,000 burials surrounded by over 5,550 plant species. The guide book in our collection, printed in 1844, was already a 5th edition. It contains a delicately drawn, folded map of America’s first rural park cemetery (seen below)
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