William McEvoy
Published: 2020-01-20
Total Pages: 222
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The book notes the history of the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery at Watertown, MA. There have been 23,000+ burials since April 11, 1854. There have but a few burials since the 1940s. A description of my methodology is included. That would assist anyone who intends to perform a large scale project with little information available. Chapter 1-Cemetery Acquisition; Chapter-2, Clergy; Chapter 3-Physicians; Chapter 4-Homicide Victims; Chapter 5-Compassion and Forgiveness-Suicides;Chapter 6-African Americans; Chapter 7-Accidental Deaths; Chapter 8-Vital Statistics of the Residents; Chapter 9-Veterans; Chapter 10-Monuments; Chapter 11-Secretary of State's Complaint; Chapter 12-Neglect of Headstones & Perpetual Care?; Appendix 1-Cemetery Capacity without Over-Burials; Appendix 2-Cemetery Map.Bill McEvoy is a US Army Veteran (1968-1971). He earned a BA from Bentley University, MBA from Suffolk University, and MA in Political Science from Boston College. While at BC he had the privilege of participating in a semester long colloquium with Dr. Thomas H. O'Connor, the Dean of the History Department. He retired as a Massachusetts District Court Magistrate in 2009. He has volunteered for eight years with the No Veteran Dies Alone program at the Bedford Veterans Hospital, as well performing pro bono work as a Magistrate, one day per week, for ten years. Since his first month of retirement, he has performed many large-scale cemetery research projects, several as a volunteer at Mount Auburn Cemetery (MAC). This book is the result his four year study of the 23,000+ people (primarily Irish immigrants or their first generation descendants) buried from 1854 to 1920 at the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery (CMAC), Watertown, MA. He expended over 6,000 hours in the course of his research and writing. The CMAC project made him aware of the high mortality rate of Boston's children. Of 15,562 burials, from 1854-1881, eighty percent died in Boston. Forty-nine percent of those Boston deaths were children who did not reach age 6. Forty-five percent of those Boston deaths were children who did not reach age 4. Between 1856 and 1893, thirty-six of the people buried at the CMAC were noted as dying at Rainsford Island. Their ages ranged from nine months to eighty-six years. James Tubman, nine months old, died in 1863 at Rainsford Island from starvation. Prior to going to Rainsford, he had been baptized at St. Joseph Church, Boston. Mary E. Sullivan, died in 1858 at Bennett Avenue [sic], Boston, from lung inflammation. She was born at Rainsford Island. That finding resulted in Bill's researching Rainsford Island and the book A Boston Harbor Case Study in Public Neglect and Private Activism, Coauthored by Robin Hazard Ray. Most of the people buried at CMAC and Rainsford Island resided in Boston's tenements. Bill plans to combine both cemetery's databases. That will allow him to measure the positive impact of Boston's men and women whose philanthropic efforts were dedicated to tenement reforms during the last half of the nineteenth century. In addition to the rehabilitation of properties, the reformers attempted to change the lives of their tenants by setting boundaries of behavior, providing encouragement and life skills, as well as closely overseeing the operation of the properties.
