It’s possible I’m in the great minority on this, but I love cemeteries.
I know they creep some people out, and I get that. But to me they’re beautiful, serene parks filled with stories. Every person, and every gravestone, has a tale to tell. In the coldest light, cemeteries are vast repositories for people who have passed. Really, though, they’re vast repositories for human history.
The reporter in me loves figuring out what historical figures might be buried in a sprawling cemetery and then putting my sleuthing skills to the test to try to find them. It’s a puzzle with a satisfying payoff, where I zoom in on the history of one person but pick up glimpses of the lives of so many others along the way.
With that in mind, I’ve assembled a list of 25 famous people buried in Vermont. They might still be famous, they might have once been famous and are now mostly forgotten, but all of them have interesting stories. I’ve been to many of these sites but have many more to look forward to visiting. (If you’re interested in doing your own cemetery sleuthing, the website Find a Grave is an invaluable resource.)
Ethan Allen, Burlington
The 18th-century-born legend remains a symbol of American and Vermont independence. Allen was an “unusually flamboyant backwoodsman-turned-statesman” known for capturing Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War, according to the website for the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum in Burlington.
Gravesite – Greenmount Cemetery, Burlington
Saul Bellow, Brattleboro
Bellow is one of seven writers to win Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. Years ago I worked for the same local newspaper company as his son, Daniel Bellow, now a potter in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and a Facebook friend. “We came to Vermont for the first time in 1978,” Daniel Bellow wrote in a Facebook Messenger exchange. “We stayed in an old farmhouse in Dummerston that first summer. My stepmother Alexandra Bagdasar Bellow Calderon, the greatest woman mathematician of the 20th century, had friends around, and Pop liked to watch Rudy Serkin (see below) play piano at Marlboro… In 1982, he built that farmhouse in Halifax, and it was his house throughout my high school and college years.”
Gravesite – Morningside Cemetery, Brattleboro
Frederick Billings, Woodstock
Billings is known in Vermont as one-third of the triumvirate providing the name to the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park in Woodstock that pays tribute to the nation’s history of environmental stewardship. He also contributed funding for what’s known as the Billings Student Center at the University of Vermont. Billings is more known to history as the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad that was instrumental in European settlement of the American West.
Gravesite – River Street Cemetery, Woodstock
Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland, West Windsor
Bronson was famous in the 1970s for starring in violent action films such as “Death Wish.” Far from Hollywood, he and his wife and fellow actor, Jill Ireland, “vacationed at their colonial farmhouse in West Windsor, Vt., called Zuleika Farm,” according to the New England Historical Society website. “Ireland raised horses there and trained them for their daughter, Zuleika.” The gravesite mentions only Bronson, but according to Find a Grave, Ireland (who died 13 years before Bronson), was cremated and her ashes were interred with Bronson. A bench at the head of Bronson’s horizontal stone beckons visitors to sit and marvel at the view of Mount Ascutney he and Ireland have for eternity.
Gravesites – Brownsville Cemetery, West Windsor
Thomas Chittenden, Williston
Almost everyone on this list has more fame outside of Vermont than does Thomas Chittenden. But as the state’s first governor and the namesake of Vermont’s most-populous county, he deserves a mention here. Even the cemetery where he’s buried shares his name.
Gravesite – Thomas Chittenden Cemetery, Williston
Ray Collins, Colchester
Vermont isn’t known for producing professional athletes, but Collins is among the most significant. He pitched for seven seasons, including one that’s a big deal to New Englanders – 1912, the first year the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. (The team was known as the Boston Americans when the franchise won the first World Series in 1903.) Fun Chittenden County factoid: Collins’ middle name is Williston.
Gravesite – Colchester Village Cemetery
Calvin and Grace Coolidge, Plymouth Notch
Vermont may not be home to many professional athletes, but the state does produce presidents – Chester Alan Arthur, who’s buried near Albany, New York, and Calvin Coolidge, who became president when Warren G. Harding died in office 101 years ago. He and his wife, Burlington native and First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge, are buried near the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site, the old family homestead where Coolidge was sworn into office.
Gravesites – Plymouth Notch Cemetery
Tomie dePaola, Weston
The terms “beloved” and “children’s author” go hand in hand, but the phrase really does apply to the New Hampshire native and author of the “Strega Nona” series of books that earned him the Caldecott Medal. “He entered Weston Priory in Weston, Vermont, in 1956,” according to dePaola’s 2020 obituary, “and although he left after six months, he maintained a lifelong association with this monastery.”
Gravesite – Weston Priory
John Dewey, Burlington
A Burlington native and University of Vermont graduate, Dewey was a philosopher who homed in on education reform. He co-founded The New School for Social Research in New York, now known simply as The New School. Fittingly considering his life devoted to education, Dewey is memorialized on the UVM campus.
Gravesite – Ira Allen Chapel, University of Vermont, Burlington
James Fisk, Brattleboro
The Bennington County native known as “Big Jim” lived a brief but classic life of Gilded Age excess. He and fellow “robber baron” Jay Gould engaged in shady dealings involving railroads and securities. Fisk, a renowned womanizer, met his end in New York when he was shot by a rival in business and love, Edward Stokes.
Gravesite – Prospect Hill Cemetery, Brattleboro
Robert Frost, Bennington
Other states lay claim to one of America’s best-known poets – Frost was born in California and lived in Massachusetts and New Hampshire – but spent many years in Vermont and is most associated with the Green Mountain State. His gravestone makes Frost a contender for best epitaph in history: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”
Gravesite – Old Bennington Cemetery, Bennington
Sidney Glazier, Bennington
A film producer, Glazier won an Oscar for the documentary “The Eleanor Roosevelt Story,” but really made his mark with one feature film. He produced the wacky, edgy-for-its-time movie “The Producers,” which launched Mel Brooks’ long and celebrated career as a film director.
Gravesite – Park Lawn Cemetery, Bennington
Hetty Green, Bellows Falls
Much like James Fisk (see above), Hetty Green was renowned for Gilded Age wealth but is obscure today. The polarizing nature of immense riches is reflected in her opposing nicknames: “The Queen of Wall Street” and “The Witch of Wall Street.” Also like Fisk, her marker, adjacent to a beautiful stone church, is a larger-than-life obelisk of the sort often found at the gravesites of the wealthy.
Gravesite – Immanuel Church, Bellows Falls
John Gunther, Greensboro
The journalist’s most-notable work was the 1949 book “Death Be Not Proud,” which detailed his teenaged son Johnny’s struggle with and eventual death from a brain tumor. The bestselling book that according to The Atlantic in a 2022 article “unleashed American grief” became a staple of high-school reading classes and was made into an Emmy-nominated film.
Gravesite – Lincoln-Noyes Cemetery, Greensboro
Dick Harter, Westmore
Harter’s parents, “Doc” and Peg Harter, ran the Songadeewin camp on Lake Willoughby. Dick Harter would become a legendary basketball coach on the college level for the University of Oregon and other schools and in the professional ranks for the NBA’s Boston Celtics, Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers and Portland Trail Blazers.
Gravesite – Lakeview Cemetery, Westmore
Jim Jeffords, North Shrewsbury
Jeffords was a popular member of Congress and later U.S. senator from Vermont who was little known outside of his home state. That changed in 2001 when the Rutland native, at odds with the policies of Republican President George W. Bush, left the Republican party and became an independent, altering the majority in the U.S. Senate.
Gravesite – Northern Cemetery, North Shrewsbury
Frances Parkinson Keyes, Coventry
A Virginia native, Keyes would move with her family to New England, splitting her time between Boston and Vermont. Though obscure now, Keyes (rhymes with “prize”) was a popular author in the early-to-mid-20th century, with works including the novels “Old Gray Homestead” and “The River Road” and numerous books and articles about her life as the wife of U.S. Sen. Henry Keyes of New Hampshire.
Gravesite – Oxbow Cemetery, Newbury
Justin Morgan, Randolph
Morgan was something of a polymath, renowned both as a composer and a horse breeder. The latter gained him lasting fame, as he’s credited with establishing the first American horse breed, the Morgan horse, immortalized in the book and Disney film “Justin Morgan Had a Horse.”
Gravesite – Randolph Center Cemetery
Justin Smith Morrill, Strafford
Not to be confused with Justin Morgan, Justin Morrill was a U.S. senator from Vermont best known for establishing the Morrill Land-Grant Acts that led to the establishment of more than 100 colleges and universities. He is, however, no longer the most-famous native son of Strafford now that Noah Kahan has become a pop-music megastar.
Gravesite – Strafford Cemetery
Lucy Terry Prince, Guilford
Born in 1724 before the United States existed, Lucy Terry Prince has received renewed interest of late, including in the new film “Lost Nation” by Vermont director Jay Craven. Prince is regarded as the writer of the oldest-known work of literature by an African-American writer for her ballad poem “Bars Fight.”
Gravesite – Prince Family Burial Ground, Guilford
Rudolf Serkin, Guilford
Saul Bellow (see above) was an admirer of this world-renowned pianist who was born in what’s now the Czech Republic and co-founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in southern Vermont. His son, Peter, and grandson David Ludwig would follow in his classical-music footsteps.
Gravesite – Christ Church Cemetery, Guilford
Alexander Twilight, Brownington
Like Lucy Terry Prince (see above), Twilight was a pioneering African-American. He is said to be the first African-American to receive a bachelor’s degree when he graduated from Middlebury College in 1823. He later became a state legislator and principal of the Orleans County Grammar School in Brownington who built what is now the Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village that highlights his legacy.
Gravesite – Brownington Village Cemetery
Maria von Trapp and family, Stowe
Visitors to Trapp Family Lodge can pay tribute to “The Sound of Music” family, but access to the gravesites on the south side of the lodge is limited. “The family cemetery is only open to those that take a family history tour,” Bob Schwartz, sales and marketing director, wrote in an email to the Burlington Free Press. “That can be someone staying on property or someone that bought a ticket to the tour. The tour is $30 per person plus tax for non resort guests or included under the resort fee for anyone staying on property that is paying the resort fee, which includes all lodge guests.”
Gravesites – Trapp Family Lodge, Stowe
Robert Penn Warren, Stratton
Though he was deeply associated with the South – his 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “All the King’s Men” was a thinly veiled fictional account of the life of legendary Louisiana politician Huey Long – Kentucky-born Robert Penn Warren had a summer home in the mountain town of Stratton, where he died in 1989.
Gravesite – Willis Cemetery, Stratton
Bill Wilson, East Dorset
Born in East Dorset, Bill Wilson was by design not a household name; he co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous and was known to many simply as Bill W. The organization he helped start now serves an estimated 2 million people worldwide who, like Wilson, are trying to overcome their dependence on alcohol.
Gravesite – East Dorset Cemetery
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Famous people buried in Vermont, from Charles Bronson to Robert Frost
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