Slate and sandstone markers fill Old North Cemetery on Maplewood Avenue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a 1.5-acre parcel on the shore of North Mill Pond. Feel how compact the ground is; its earliest burials are dated to 1751, and it was not formally established as a cemetery until 1753. This is the largest of the city’s 18th‑century burial grounds, and you can still sense why it drew stonecarvers from relatively distant locations — their work appears here, carved into slate and sandstone.
In 1978 the cemetery was recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, a quiet nod to its long presence in the landscape. The setting you see now — on the southwest side of Maplewood Avenue, north of downtown — contrasts with the original plan: at its founding this ground was essentially laid out on a peninsula and the pond was more a tidal inlet of the Piscataqua River. Today the site is bounded on the southeast by a railroad yard and on the northwest by Union Cemetery, and to the west it borders a portion of North Mill Pond, the result of intensive development and redevelopment in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Notice the railroad yard to the southeast, Union Cemetery to the northwest, and the pond's water just west of here.