In the Author's Ridge section of this cemetery are the graves of American literary greats Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each Memorial Day Alcott's grave is decorated in commemoration of her death.
Follow the signs for AUTHOR'S RIDGE and climb the hill to the graves of some of the town's literary giants, including the Alcotts, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. Emerson's bears no religious symbols; the marker is an uncarved quartz boulder. Thoreau is buried nearby; at his funeral, in 1862, his old friend Emerson concluded his eulogy with these words: " . . . wherever there is knowledge,...