The RI Advisory Commission on Historical Cemeteries and the RI Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission organized RI Historical Cemeteries Awareness and Preservation Weeks in April and May to give people the chance to discover Rhode Island’s historic cemeteries and burial grounds through clean-ups, tours, open houses, gravestone conservation workshops, talks, and other programs. Dave Weed, Coordinator of the Sowams Heritage Area Project took advantage of this event to offer a tour of the oldest known cemetery in Rhode Island, the Royal Pokanoket Burial Ground at Burr’s Hill Park in Warren. Click here for a five-and-a-half video of the tour recorded on May 13, 2023.
Weed began the tour at the historic marker that was installed in 2020 that describes the burial site and the history of Burr’s Hill, a moraine deposited by glaciers over 10,000 years ago.
(Above) In a photo taken around 1900 of lower Water Street and the Warren River, one of the many sand dunes that once covered the Park can be seen covering what is now the parking lot. In May, 2017, tribes gathered to return over 600 items that we taken from 42 gravesites by Charles Carr in 1913 and were reburied in a concrete vault under the monument to Ousamequin, the great Massasoit who was one of those buried there in 1661.
Weed described the contents of the graves that included many European artifacts that were buried with the bodies. Those contents were returned to the site and placed in the vault at a ceremony attended by tribes from Eastern Massachusetts who obtained them from the museums where they had been placed by Carr.
Click here for photos and video from a similar tour in 2022.
Click here for photos and video from the dedication of a bench at the site by the Mayflower Descendents.
Click here for photos and video of a talk that Weed gave to campers at the Park.
Click here for photos and video of the dedication of the historic marker at the site.
Click here for photos and video of a talk that Weed gave about the history of the Park.
Click here for photos and video of Pokanoket Heritage Day held at Burr’s Hill Park.