Dying to Get In
AS PLACES TO SPEND ETERNITY GO, the Dartmouth Cemetery certainly has its charms. Surrounded by 100-foot-tall white pines and the energy of a never-aging stream of undergraduates, you'd rest in the company of eight former College presidents, including College founder Eleazar Wheelock and many of his kin. (The first burial in the cemetery was of the Rev. John Maltby, Wheelock's beloved stepson, who died in 1771.) More than 500 people are believed to be buried in the cemetery, although the exact number is unknown—some early burials were never marked and, through the centuries, some markers have disappeared.
What does it take to get in?
Cemetery records kept in Rauner Library's Special Collections indicate that plots could be purchased in the 1920s for between $5 and $100. William Desch, Hanover's urban forester and the cemetery's caretaker since 1989 (Dartmouth ceded the cemetery to the town in 1943), confirms that as late as the 1960s a plot of 12 graves could be had for around $100. But the last available plots were sold in the 1970s (the cemetery still averages four or five new burials a year from those who already own plots).
For anyone who would still like to obtain a gravesite within earshot of Baker's bells, two little words may offer a sweet alternative: Pine Knolls. The towns second and lesser-known cemetery consists of 30 acres off South Main Street near Mink Brook as the town arboretum. Founded in the 1930s, Pine Knolls is the resting place of College luminaries such as presidents Ernest Martin Hop-kins, class of 1901, and John Sloan Dickey, class of 1929. According to Desch, they were persuaded in the 1950s to buy plots there in order to draw interest to the alternative cemetery. Today plots cost $300. If you're dying to be buried in Hanover, Pine Knolls may be your best bet.
There is, alas, one other way to spend your eternal rest near the College on the Hill: by donating your body for anatomical research at the Dartmouth Medical School. Once studies are completed, families may opt to have their loved ones' cremains buried in the Dartmouth Cemetery's Medical School lot, which is located in the southwest corner of the cemetery near Thayer Engineering School. There are restrictions: Donors must be New Hampshire or Vermont residents registered with the anatomy department at the time of death, and their deaths must occur in one of the two states.
