Wide awake in Sleepy Hollow

There are few places in Concord more interesting than Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Or more picturesque. So it's no wonder that even if the gals from Gatepost aren't giving a tour there, we're often to be found lurking about the paths and gravestones, camera in hand, soaking up the intoxicating mixture of history, nature and aesthetic delight.

One could easily pass hours in this place, just like our authors and residents-past have been doing throughout Concord's long history. Sleepy Hollow was already a favorite picnic spot and walking destination, even in Hawthorne's time. 






A friend of Nathaniel and Sophia's wrote thus in her journal:

“We went to the Old Manse where they had lived when they were first married, and then wandered on to the wooded slopes of the Sleep Hollow Valley in which the Concord people had begun to lay away their dead.

It was a cool morning with soft mists rolling up the hills, and flashes between of sudden sunlight. The air was full of pungent woody smells and the undergrowth blushed pink with blossoms. There was no look of a cemetery about the place. Here and there, in a shady nook, was a green hillock like a bed, as if some tired traveler had chosen a quiet place for himself and laid down to sleep.

Mr. Hawthorne sat down in the deep grass, and then, clasping his hands about his knees, looked up laughing. “Yes” he said, “we New Englanders begin to enjoy ourselves – when we are dead.”

As we walked back the mists gathered and they day darkened overhead. Hawthorne, who had been joking like a boy, grew suddenly silent, and before we reached home the cloud had settled down again upon him, and his steps lagged heavily.

Even the faithful woman who kept always close to his side with her laughing words and anxious eyes did not know that day how fast the last shadows were closing in upon him.

In a few months he was lying under the deep grass, at rest, near the very spot where he sat and laughed, looking up at us."

Excerpt from Hawthorne in His Own Time (Bosco & Myerson) [Rebecca Harding Davis, during her visit to Concord in 1862]

Just one of the many tales to be told in our remarkable burial ground. Book a Sleepy Hollow walking tour with us to hear the rest! Or, if you'd rather not get up, just enjoy these photo's from yesterday's walk....

 The Hoars were known as "Concord's Royal Family". They lived in the Hoar house, of course.














Daniel Chester French (best known for sculpting the Lincoln Memorial) has several interesting connections in Sleepy Hollow.

A new view...

Of something old.

Even the modern gravestones blend in perfectly.

Frank Sanborn. In our opinion, quite possibly the coolest dude to live in Concord. Ever.

While many of these photos were further processed or enhanced, this one is in its raw form. Yes, the pond growth really is that green and it's most amusing to watch to ducks emerge onto the shore looking like they just came back from visiting Chernobyl.

Finally, no visit would be complete without paying homage to Ephriam. Who also comes into the Frank Sanborn story. Along with the Hoars. And pretty much anyone else you can think of. A 19th-century ruckus in all its glory.