A burying place laid out in 1699 and still in use, with a notable collection of early eighteenth-century slate.
Groveland Cemetery sits on the east side of Mann Lot Road near its intersection with Country Way in North Scituate. It covers more than nine acres, with nearly 350 feet of frontage on the road and grounds running back more than 1,000 feet. It is one of the oldest burying grounds in Scituate, and it still accepts burials.
Unlike most of the cemeteries we work in, Groveland is not run by the town or a parish. It is owned and maintained by the Groveland Cemetery Association. That means questions about lots, burial rights, and what you are allowed to place on a grave go to the Association, not to Scituate Town Hall. If you hold a family lot, your deed or lot paperwork should name the Association as the owner.
The cemetery dates to 1699, when the Conihassett partners, the proprietors of the land that became North Scituate, laid out a burying place between the land of Thomas Hiland and John Pierce. It has grown since. Scituate's 2007 burial sites survey noted that the Association was expanding burial sections on the north side of the grounds.
The structures tell the rest of the story: a receiving tomb built in 1853, where bodies were held through the winter until the ground could be dug, a hearse house, entry gates, a fieldstone perimeter wall, and iron fencing and stone curbing around family plots.
Groveland holds what the town's survey calls "a superb collection of early eighteenth century slate markers." The survey credits known carvers here, including the Soule shop, Bildad Washburn, and Jacob Vinal Jr. Vinal's work also survives at Cohasset Central Cemetery, a few miles north, and the South Shore carvers of this period are studied today as folk artists.
Early slate is thin, layered stone. It rarely wears away gradually the way marble does; instead, water gets between the layers, freezes, and pushes a face off in sheets. Anything that forces water into the stone, scrapes the surface, or levers at a loose edge speeds that up. Granite, marble, and slate explains how each material weathers, and why D/2 and not bleach covers what household cleaners do to old stone.
If a veteran in your family is buried here, how veteran flag placement works covers who places Memorial Day flags and how to make sure a grave isn't missed.
The Town of Scituate and the Scituate Historical Society commissioned a survey of the town's burial grounds, completed in 2007. At Groveland it identified 119 slate markers and 155 granite and marble markers in need of conservation. It found that mowing close to the stones had caused scratching and breakage, and it expected many of the mature trees — including a European beech of roughly 60 inches in diameter near the center — to reach the end of their lives within twenty years.
That survey is now nearly two decades old, and some of this may have been addressed since. But the pattern it describes is common: the damage to old stones in an active cemetery usually comes from routine grounds work and from well-meant scrubbing, not from neglect. Hand-trimming around the base of an early slate and keeping equipment off it does more good than any cleaning.
We have not found a published burial database from the Association. Volunteer transcriptions on Find a Grave and the Scituate pages of the Massachusetts GenWeb project are the best places to start, and the Scituate Historical Society is a good resource for early families. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search.
If you have a name but can't get to North Scituate, we can walk the grounds, find the stone, and photograph it for a one-time fee of $15–$25. Early slate that looks blank in flat light is often still legible in raking light, so we photograph from more than one angle.
We have not found published rules on plantings, decorations, or seasonal removal for Groveland, and we are not going to guess at them. Ask the Association before planting or placing anything, especially near the early slate section. If you learn the current rules, tell us and we will add them here with the date they were confirmed.
For general guidance on what suits a grave in this climate, see what to plant at a grave site.
North Scituate is close enough to the water that salt air reaches the stones, and coastal plots tend to green up with lichen and algae faster than inland ones. Why coastal headstones need more frequent cleaning explains the mechanism. With early slate, Victorian marble, and modern granite all on the same grounds, there is no single method here.
We clean with D/2 Biological Solution over a minimum of three visits, with no pressure washing, no wire brushes, and nothing abrasive on any stone. The three-visit process covers what happens on site.
Tell us the family name or roughly where the stone is. We'll look at what the material actually calls for, and send photos after every visit.
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