First Parish Cemetery, Norwell

First Parish Cemetery is one of the largest and best known burying grounds in Norwell, with its earliest graves dating from 1724. It began as the property of the First Parish Church. In 1908 the church transferred the cemetery and the adjacent tomb yard to its lot holders for one dollar, and it has been run since then by the First Parish Cemetery Association — a private non-profit with its own Board of Directors. It is non-sectarian.

Records and permissions go to the Association at firstparishcemeterynorwell@gmail.com or P.O. Box 763, Norwell, MA 02061 — not to the Town of Norwell. The grounds are open to the public sunrise to sunset, and the Association runs tours each October with the Norwell Historical Society.

Who is buried here

For a cemetery of its size, First Parish holds an unusual concentration of Norwell and North River history.

The oldest stone is believed to be that of Mary Bryant, who died in 1724 — "Here lyes ye body of Mrs. Mary Briant" — its inscription recording her death and that of her two infant children, born eight days before she died.

The shipbuilding trade that defined the North River is well represented. John Briggs was the master shipbuilder whose ship Columbia circumnavigated the globe. William James built the Malabar at the Block House Shipyard. The Delano family, who worked at the Wanton Shipyard, are in a large family tomb. The Merritt family includes Joseph Foster Merritt, who wrote The History of South Scituate-Norwell.

The novelist and short-story writer John Cheever, who died in 1982, is buried near the western border of the cemetery, close to Cheever Tavern, alongside his parents.

Others worth knowing about: Juliette "Lettie" Hammond, the first woman to vote in Norwell, on a School Committee ballot in 1900; Charles and Harriett Granderson, among the few Black residents of Norwell in the mid-1800s; Dr. Isaac Otis, Scituate's first physician, whose stone carries a saddlebag for the horseback rounds he made; Eleanor Norris, who gave the land now called the Norris Reservation, and whose gravestone was made from a repurposed mill wheel; and a memorial stone to Humphrey Turner, who arrived at Plymouth in 1632 and is actually buried at Men of Kent in Scituate.

A number of stones here have undergone restoration funded through the Community Preservation Act between 2022 and 2025.

What you may and may not place at a grave

The Association's rules were adopted in May 1991 and amended in May 1999. They are the most permissive of any cemetery we have written up, and worth reading if you have been told elsewhere on the South Shore that a planting is not allowed.

Permitted

• Small permanent flower beds around a headstone, provided they are set in a loamed area with edging that will not interfere with regular maintenance or mowing.
• Bulbs — daffodils and tulips are named specifically — may be planted without a bed, on the understanding that the area will be mowed once they are past their prime.
• Shrubs near a monument, so long as they are kept pruned. Overgrown shrubs may be pruned or removed at the Superintendent's discretion.
• Holiday memorials such as Christmas wreaths and spring flower baskets, removed by the lot holder within 60 days of the holiday.

Not permitted, and the conditions attached

• No trees may be planted.
• Upkeep of a flower bed is the lot holder's responsibility. Beds that are not suitably maintained may be reseeded with grass at the Superintendent's discretion.
• Lot holders may do their own maintenance work, provided they clean up completely afterward.
• All burials are supervised by the Cemetery Superintendent, who is responsible for locating the burial site.

What the rules mean in practice

This is the one South Shore cemetery we know of where a real perennial bed is expressly contemplated. Permanent beds with edging are permitted by name. Compare High Street in Hingham, which prohibits perennials outright, or Hingham Cemetery, where anything permanent needs the Board's written consent and fresh flowers last a week. Five cemeteries, five different regimes — which is the whole reason we look each one up rather than working from a general policy.

Sixty days for holiday décor is generous. A Christmas wreath placed in mid-December does not have to come out until February. Fall mums have room to run their season out properly.

The bed comes with an obligation. A permanent bed that is not kept up can be reseeded back to grass, which makes this a better fit for a plot someone is actually tending than for a plant-it-and-leave-it arrangement. That is precisely the gap an annual care plan fills for families who no longer live nearby.

Mind the mowing. Both the bed rule and the bulb rule are written around not interfering with maintenance. Edging that a mower can work around matters more here than the plant list does. Our grave-site planting guide covers variety selection for these conditions.

Stone care here

Norwell's cemeteries are quiet and tree-covered, and First Parish is no exception. That shade is the defining factor for stone condition here. Salt is not the issue it is on the coast — the issue is moisture that never fully dries. A heavily shaded plot holds damp long after an open one has dried out, and persistent moisture is exactly what algae, moss, and lichen need most. Green biological growth is the most common condition we treat in Norwell, on stones that have never been near salt spray. North-facing markers darken fastest of all.

Practically, a shaded inland plot here wants attention on roughly the same 12-to-18-month cycle as an exposed coastal one, for entirely different reasons — coastal and shaded stone care covers the comparison.

Many Norwell markers predate the town's separation from Scituate and are thin, fragile slate rather than modern granite. Those are the stones least able to survive a wrong method, and the ones where why D/2 and not bleach matters most. We clean with D/2 Biological Solution across a minimum of three visits, with no pressure washing and nothing abrasive.

The Association's rules place monument work and grounds maintenance with the lot holder rather than reserving it to the cemetery, so a family with a plot here can generally arrange stone cleaning directly. We would still let the Superintendent know before working on the grounds, which is ordinary courtesy at a cemetery of this age.

Finding a burial here

Start with Find a Grave and BillionGraves, then contact the Association — as a private cemetery it holds its own records, and the Norwell Town Clerk will not have them. The October tours with the Norwell Historical Society are a good way to learn the layout if your timing allows, and the historical society is itself a strong resource for Norwell family research. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search.

One thing specific to Norwell: the town was part of Scituate until 1849, when it separated as South Scituate, taking the name Norwell in 1888. Records for an early family may be filed under any of those names, and relatives may be buried in what is now Scituate rather than here.

If you have narrowed a search to First Parish and cannot get to Norwell, we can walk the grounds, locate the stone, and photograph it for a one-time fee of $15–$25.

Contacting the Association

The First Parish Cemetery Association can be reached at firstparishcemeterynorwell@gmail.com or P.O. Box 763, Norwell, MA 02061. Its website, which includes the full rules and a detailed notable-stones guide, is firstparishcemeterynorwell.org. We are not affiliated with the Association; we are a private care service that works in the cemetery.