Highland Cemetery

Highland Cemetery began as a small colonial burying ground on land belonging to Nathaniel Chickering. Dating to 1729, it was established when Dover was still part of Dedham and consisted of scattered farms connected by narrow roads and footpaths. Chickering later formally gave the original tract to the community, ensuring that local families would have a shared place to bury and remember their dead.

The oldest section contains slate gravestones from the eighteenth century, many carved with winged skulls, cherubs and other symbols commonly used in colonial New England. Their weathered inscriptions preserve the names of the families who shaped Dover’s early religious, agricultural and civic life. Small markers beside larger stones also recall how frequently children died during a time when disease and limited medical care made childhood especially uncertain.

As Dover grew, the cemetery expanded beyond its original boundaries. Its granite wall along Centre Street was constructed in 1892, replacing the earlier enclosure and giving the burial ground a more formal entrance. Family plots, iron fences and later marble and granite monuments reflect the changing ways in which successive generations commemorated their loved ones.

Highland Cemetery remains more than a collection of old gravestones. It is a record of the people who lived, worked, worshiped and raised families in Dover across nearly three centuries. Its stones preserve individual stories while collectively revealing the growth of a community from a rural colonial settlement into the town it is today.