There are eight public burying grounds in the town of Northfield. That doesn’t count Round Top where D.L. Moody and his wife, Emma, repose, or Evelyn Hall’s resting place next to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel (formerly Sage Chapel) to name only two other gravesites. One in particular holds special interest to anyone who might care about the history of Mr. Moody’s schools. Its origins date to the time before the residents of Grass Hill, today, the campus of Northfield Mount Hermon voted (February 28, 1795) to secede from Northfield and join the town of Gill. The earliest surviving stone that I’ve seen there reads:
Mrs.
Martha, Relict of
Mr. Benoni Wright
died 27 Nov 1785
But it isn’t these early gravestones that attract the attention of this writer, it is the vast majority of all of the others: those men, women, and children, and their children, and their children’s children, who both figuratively and sometimes literally gave their lives to Mr. Moody’s schools. As the current archivist at Northfield Mount Hermon, I’m fond of saying that all of my friends are there. The names of so many former employees from lofty principals to those whom Carleton Finch dubbed “the lesser saints” adorn the granite tombstones that I hesitate to name any of them, not wanting to slight the neighbor resting right alongside.
Sadly, it isn’t only those names from school histories that one finds when one walks these grounds. A corner of the cemetery is dedicated to Mount Hermon students who lost their lives while at the school. Some died so far from home that burial here only made financial sense, others had no home but the school. Another group of former students here chose this place to be remembered because their years on the nearby campus were among the best of their lives.
compiled by NHS Board Member and NMH Archivist, Peter Weis, 2024
Northfield Historical Society 