Grove Street Cemetery

Historical Significance of Grove Street Cemetery

The Grove Street Cemetery is one of the oldest burial grounds in the City of New Haven. It was established in1797; the cemetery was the first in the country designed with family plots. Within it are the graves or grave markers of most early residents of New Haven, including those of Eli Whitney (Class of 1792), Noah Webster (Class of 1778), Walter Camp (Class of 1880), Roger Sherman, fourteen Yale presidents, and hundreds of other faculty members, alumni, and campus luminaries. An African American section outside of the main cemetery is called Jethro’s Corner. It’s named after Jethro Luke, whose family wrote an account of the Battle of New Haven during the revolutionary War.

Architectural and Natural Features

Located behind a brownstone wall and iron fence running along Grove and Prospect streets, the cemetery serves as the resting place for many historically important figures and a number of its tombstones date back to the 1600s. In addition to a collection of specimen trees, the cemetery also has an architecturally prominent Egyptian Revival gateway entrance facing High Street.

The Grove Street Cemetery is one of only 64 National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut and is one of eight such landmarks in New Haven.

The Grove Street Cemetery listed on the Connecticut Freedom Trail for numerous sites, including: the Memorial Stone for Six Amistad Captives; the William Grimes Tombstone and the James Hillhouse gravesite.

This site is open to the public.