Ancient Burying Ground Hartford

In 1995, three Hartford middle-school students began investigating stories about Black governors. Andriena Baldwin, Christopher Hayes and Monique Price, working with their teacher Billie Anthony, uncovered the lives of men elected as leaders by the city's Black community. These were customary positions rather than offices in Connecticut's government. Their research led to a monument in the Ancient Burying Ground in 1998. A cemetery associated with Hartford's founders became a place where students helped recover a history that many adults had overlooked.

The burying ground began in 1640, and an estimated six thousand people were interred here. Approximately 415 gravestones remain. The difference between those numbers is part of the site's story: a carved marker was expensive, and many burials never received one. The ground behind Center Church holds far more lives than a walk among the surviving stones can reveal. Later construction also took portions of the original cemetery as Hartford grew around it.