Salem Street Burying Ground
Medford, MAAn engraved boulder in Medford honors twenty-five New Hampshire soldiers whose remains are believed to have been reinterred in that area. According to local lore, a Medford citizen named John Russell was digging a cellar in 1849 when he turned up a cache of human bones he believed to have been of Revolutionary War soldiers. A record shows Medford selectmen paid town sexton Jacob Brooks $2.50 to bury the bones at the Salem Street Burying Ground, however the location was left unmarked.
Brooks reportedly showed the site to his grandson, Jacob Winslow Vining, who conveyed the location to others years later. An 1855 town history by Reverend Charles Brooks indicated that the bones belonged to twenty-five of General John Stark’s men, who had been killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill and “buried in the field, about fifty or sixty rods north of Gravelly Bridge.”
The Sons of the American Revolution of New Hampshire and the Sarah Bradlee Fulton Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution worked together to memorialize the site in 1904. A stone was shipped from Plymouth, New Hampshire to Medford, engraved, and officially dedicated on October 29, 1904. The ceremony included an assembly at the Royall House, General Stark’s headquarters in 1775, and an historical address by Medford Historical Society secretary and Sarah Bradlee Fulton Chapter founder Eliza M. Gill.
The memorial reads:
IN MEMORY OF
NEW HAMPSHIRE SOLDIERS
WHO FELL AT BUNKER HILL
BURIED IN THIS TOWN