Island Cemetery

Wealthy
famous
and
deceased
Island Cemetery is a very large graveyard in a part of Newport that has lots of cemeteries. If it wasn’t for the fences it would be very difficult to tell where one ended and another started.
There are thousands of graves here and some of the most wealthy and famous Newport residents were laid to rest in this graveyard. Of course with very rich people usually comes very large and opulent memorials.
There are indeed some very impressive gravestones but plenty of more modest ones too. The cemetery was started in the mid 19^th century so the real old graves are found in other graveyards.
Many of the rich and famous people here are know only to people knowledgeable with Newport history but others like Oliver Hazard Perry, the famous naval commander and hero, will probably ring a bell with most people.
It’s interesting to look at some of the very elaborate and obviously expensive graves but the more mundane ones are touching too. Just so many and different ones. Lots of people from lots of places. The one thing that they all share is that they are all no longer alive.

A nice, quiet spot for a short stroll off the beaten path in Newport, at least until the tweens come squealing through here after school.
This is the final resting place of Oliver Hazard Perry (hero of the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie), by far the cemetery’s most famous resident. As well as his younger brother, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, many other minor to moderate national and local celebrities of mid– to late-​nineteenth century vintage occupy the grounds. The Oliver Hazard Perry monument is the grandest in a cemetery profuse with obelisks and is worth a side trip to the cemetery for anyone with an interest in naval history.
Island Cemetery and its older neighbor the Common Burial Ground are jointly listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is interesting to compare the gravestone architecture from the colonial-​era Common Burial Ground to the later era of the Island Cemetery.