Grove Street Cemetery Events


FREE ONE-HOUR TOURS ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2003

As part of Yale University's very special FAMILY OPEN HOUSE day being offered to the New Haven
community from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 8, 2003, there will be three one-hour tours of Grove Street Cemetery.

The tours will depart from the 'chapel' office just inside the Grove Street Cemetery gate at 10:30 a.m., at noon, and at 1:30 p.m. Each guided walking tour will last about one hour and is FREE.

You will have an opportunity to learn about the history of this over-200 year old cemetery as well as a chance to see the gravestones of some of the eminent and prominent people buried there.

These tours will be provided by The Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery. Regular weekly tours of
the cemetery will begin again in early June, 2004.


July 4, 2003 Festivities:
A Celebration to Honor the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Program starts at 9:00 a.m., July 4th, Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.

Sponsored by the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). Some of the local Boy Scouts are also participants as well, as is the Governors Foot Guard.

The delegations proceed to the grave of Roger Sherman, who signed all four major documents (Articles of Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution) and also the grave site of David Humphreys, who was an Aide-de-Camp to General George Washington. There will be an honor guard and guns will be fired!!



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EDITOR'S NOTE

A local bow to freedom's birth

Robert J. Leeney , Editor Emeritus 06/28/2003

Like so many of the local rites of spring that have been denied us in the monsoon weekends from March through June, a walk beneath the blossom-time brightness of the Grove Street Cemetery has eluded most of us this year.


But the time-softened, celebratory spirit of the place persists. And next week, as the Fourth of July comes up on Friday's calendar, the simple pleasures of one of the best Independence Day observances in the nation will perhaps be there for us to share without rain. Set your holiday alarm clock, now, for a 9 a.m. start in the rare cemetery that is a National Historic Landmark.

If you're in a "been there, done that" slump, you know that these are memorial moments worth some regular reprise - from the modest village-style parade to the fife music of the Second Company Governor's Foot Guard, and the brief tributes, in dappled shade, at the graves of our Declaration-signer Roger Sherman and of Gen. David B. Humphreys, who was George Washington's valued aide-de-camp.

The occasion has been sponsored for the past 53 years by the Connecticut Sons of the American Revolution, Gen. David B. Humphreys Branch No. 1, and other patriotic societies.

It was conceived by two now-deceased Register news staffers, writer William Prendergast and Managing Editor Roger Connolly, a Governor's Foot Guard officer, as a way to mark Independence Day after World War II's cataclysmic events.

There are sometimes child participants, including Boy Scouts who individually present the flags of the 13 original Colonies that became the states of a new republic.

On Friday in the New Haven Burial Ground where some soldier-survivors of the Revolution are buried, Marshall Robinson of the Sons of the American Revolution will briefly discuss the remarkable life of Roger Sherman, the only American who signed the four formative documents of the republic. He became New Haven's first mayor in 1784.

Robert Novack of the Derby Historical Society will review the public career of David Humphreys, who became an agricultural pioneer after the fighting ended, imported merino sheep from Spain and provided fine wool cloth for the inaugural coat of President James Madison.

The ancient foot guard, represented here by officers and its field music unit, is a reminder that in April 1775 - 15 months before there was a Declaration of Independence or a Revolutionary War - New Haven's local militia, armed at the town's powder house, marched north to join the Minute Men at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Remarkable memories.


Robert J. Leeney is editor emeritus of the Register, 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511.
Reprinted with permission.

İNew Haven Register 2003

Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery, Inc.
P. O. Box #9238
New Haven, CT 06533-0238

office@grovestreetcemetery.org