Green River Cemetery - Greenfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts

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GRC Interment Books

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List of Centenarians in Green River Cemetery

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Green River Chronology

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     The non-denominational Green River Cemetery was consecrated in 1851 and today is the largest cemetery in Greenfield, Massachusetts, with over 12,000 interments on 58 acres. It is bordered by Wisdom Way, Petty Plain Road and the Green River and overlooks the town center of Greenfield.

     The former superintendent's lodge, now the newly-renovated Children's Advocacy Center of Franklin County and North Quabbin, overlooks the entrance off Wisdom Way and a no-longer-used, stone Gothic Revival chapel (above photo), central to the Cemetery, is nestled in a pine grove.

     The oldest part of the Cemetery was designed in 1851 according to the picturesque principles of the then-stylish "rural cemetery". This portion consists of undulating turf and is partially wooded with mature oak and maple trees. A circuitous system of roads separates the grounds into sections of burial lots. Important citizens of Greenfield history are buried here, and many notable monuments attract visitors. A striking 35-foot obelisk at the family plot of William B. Washburn, former governor of the Commonwealth, can be glimpsed from most of the grounds. A marble bas-relief angel marking the Russell family plot is the only monument of this type sculpted by Daniel Chester French, best known for the Lincoln Memorial statue in the nation's capital. Washburn obelisk

     The newer part of the cemetery consists of nine and a half acres of sandy grassland at the southwest of the property. Currently, two straight, parallel roads provide access to plots, which are part of a recently designed grid pattern. Between these new sections and the older sections lies a narrow, rectangular 3-acre burying ground owned by the Catholic diocese.

 


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