One more place to enjoy near Rochester in New York
Mount Hope Cemetery is a landmark of American history and landscape design, founded in 1835 and opened in 1836 on 165 acres of glacially carved terrain in Rochester, New York. As one of the oldest Victorian cemeteries in the United States, it was designed in the rural cemetery movement tradition, emphasizing natural beauty and contemplative solitude over formal, crowded burial grounds. The sweeping lawns, mature trees, and winding paths were intended to create a park-like environment where the living could commune with the past in serenity.
The cemetery is most famous as the final resting place of two giants of American reform: Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist, orator, and author, was interred here in 1895 after a public funeral attended by thousands. He escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838 and became one of the most commanding voices against slavery and for civil rights in 19th-century America, publishing his landmark autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. Anthony, the legendary women’s rights advocate who led the campaign for women’s suffrage in America, lived in Rochester for more than 50 years and directed much of her activism from her home on Madison Street. She died in 1906 at age 85 and was buried beside her lifelong companion Daniel Follett in the Anthony family plot. The proximity of their graves has made Mount Hope a pilgrimage site for those interested in the intertwined histories of abolition and women’s rights.
Beyond Douglass and Anthony, the cemetery contains the graves of many figures who shaped Rochester and the nation. George Ellwanger, co-founder of the famous Ellwanger nursery, created one of the most acclaimed horticultural estates in America on land adjacent to the cemetery. James S. Wadsworth, a prominent lawyer, politician, and Union Army general, rests here alongside Lewis H. Morgan, the pioneering anthropologist whose work on kinship systems helped found the discipline of American anthropology. Isaac Rice, the entrepreneur who built the Interurban Railway system that connected Rochester to surrounding communities, is also interred here. These burials reflect Rochester’s 19th-century identity as a city of inventors, reformers, and builders.
The cemetery’s landscape is itself a primary attraction. Designed in the tradition of the Rural Cemetery Movement, the grounds feature glacially formed hills and valleys, mature specimen trees, and naturalistic plantings that evoke the Romantic ideal of nature as a source of spiritual renewal. Victorian-era monuments line the gently curving drives and footpaths, ranging from simple fieldstones to elaborate obelisks, sarcophagi, and sculptured effigies. The main entrance features a pair of historic lodge gatehouses built in 1891, their Queen Anne style architecture a striking introduction to the dignity within. The Douglass and Anthony graves are the most visited sites in the cemetery, with Douglass’s substantial granite obelisk bearing his name and years 1818 to 1895, and Anthony’s pink granite monument in the Anthony family plot on the cemetery’s west side frequently adorned with flowers and suffrage-era symbols.
Mount Hope Cemetery is open to the public daily from sunrise to sunset year-round. Spring and fall offer the most comfortable temperatures and the most striking natural scenery, with wildflowers in May and June and the turning of maple and oak leaves in October. Free guided walking tours are offered on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m. from May through October, departing from the main entrance on Mount Hope Avenue. These tours, led by knowledgeable volunteer historians, cover the cemetery’s design, notable burials, and stories from Rochester’s past. No reservation is required for individuals, though groups of six or more should contact the cemetery office in advance. Visitors interested in genealogy or specific burials can search the Mount Hope Cemetery Database online, which contains records for hundreds of thousands of interments dating back to the cemetery’s founding.