HISTORICAL SKETCH OF COPP'S HILL BURYING-GROUND WITH DESCRIPTIONS AND QUAINT EPITAPHS BY JOHN NORTON, Hull St., Boston 1907 HISTORY OF COPP'S HILL. In early days the well-to-do of Boston dwelt largely in the North End, a very pleasant and convenient part of the peninsula. Until the time, just succeeding the Revolution, the North End retained its social prominence; then the notables and fashionables began to leave it. It was quite natural, therefore, in accordance with the custom of the time, that the town should early provide a burying-ground in this comparatively well settled section. In 1659 there was bought a lot of land on the summit of Copp's Hill, which formed the nucleus of the present ground. (Suffolk Deed, lib. 53, fol. 153.) Copp's Hill was an eminently suitable spot for the purpose. Although lower than Beacon Hill and Fort Hill, it was scarcely less commanding and seemed equally a topographical feature. The rectangular plateau on the summit easily lent itself to burial needs. Wood, among the first travellers to record his impressions of Boston, says in his "New England Prospect" (London, 1634): "On the North side is another Hill, equall in bignesse to Fort Hill), whereon stands a Winde-mill." This was the first windmill erected in the colony. These old windmills, in the days when corn was legal tender, were useful servants to the community and were a feature of the landscape. Winthrop records a mill built on Windmill Point in 1636, and three others were put up by 1650. After Boston had become a city, the two last surviving windmills still stood Con Windmill Point. On July 31, 1643, the town granted Henry Simons, John Button and others all the land between the Town Cove and the marshes beyond, on condition that they erect "one or more corne mills, and maynteyne the same forever." The "south" and "north" mills were accordingly constructed on the shore of the Mill Pond, and others gradually followed, including later a sawmill and a chocolate mill. During the first century of its existence the ground was called the North burying ground, this name giving way to that of the hill itself. On the hill, in turn, three names were successively bestowed. At first it was generally known as the Mill Hill, and the entire district about the hill was also known as the "Mylne Field" or "Mill-field," being frequently so named in grants and conveyances of land. The early settlers in Watertown had there built a windmill; and Governor Winthrop notes in his |