Examining the T’s spooky claim to fame – The Boston Globe

It’s Halloween. So in the spirit of the holiday, today’s newsletter revisits a macabre piece of Boston transit lore: the oft-repeated claim that the city has the world’s only trolley line that runs through a cemetery.

I am not convinced that is actually true. But in the course of researching the question, a more serious one arises. Lots of land in Boston is locked up in cemeteries. Is it, just maybe, too much?

Back to the trivia question. The route in question is the much-loved Ashmont-Mattapan trolley, part of which bisects Cedar Grove Cemetery in Dorchester. The first mention that I found of its allegedly unique distinction in the Globe archives dated to 1975, which in turn cited Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.”

According to that Globe article, the cemetery opened in 1867, and five years later a railroad company outraged local NIMBY (not in my boneyard) critics when it exercised its eminent domain rights to build the line that subsequently became the Mattapan trolley route. As you’d expect, ghoulish traditions soon developed, like a conductor who liked to recite a morbid poem on the midnight run and a mysterious trackside apparition reported by riders, said to be the ghost of cemetery superintendent Frederick M. Safford.

Whether the line is actually unique, though, may depend on how you define “trolley” — and how you define “through.” There is an Amtrak route through cemeteries in Milwaukee, but that’s not a trolley, so I guess it doesn’t count. There’s a tram (which as far as I can tell is the same as trolley) that goes through a cemetery in Prague, but it’s on a road and separated by a wall from the graves so perhaps it doesn’t truly go through the cemetery.

What appears to be true, though, is that the Mattapan Line’s configuration is, if not unique, at least unusual.

As it so happens, the building of the Mattapan line coincided with a fleeting moment in Boston’s history when some officials were questioning whether the city’s cemeteries needed to be repurposed. An article published this summer in the journal Historical Archaeology sketched out a brief history of cemetery management in Boston. In 1874, according to the article, the newly created Board of Health was given jurisdiction over cemeteries. In a 1878 report, it recommended moving burials to the suburbs and made this remark about graveyards in the city:”

Sooner or later (it may not be in this or the next generation), the remains of those buried in these cemeteries will be removed, and the ground will be used for other purposes.”

That prediction proved wildly inaccurate. The next year, when the city proposed moving the Granary and King’s Chapel burial grounds, the backlash was so fierce that the state Legislature stepped in and passed legislation forbidding cities from conveying historic cemeteries. More recent cemeteries were exempted, and the health board, failing to take the hint, turned some of them into other uses like playgrounds. “The ground is far better consecrated in the happiness of these little ones,” the board wrote about one conversion in the North End, “than in the gloom and decay which were once the order there.” In 1897, though, control over cemeteries was transferred to a different agency and talk of moving them largely ended.

Fast forward to today, and cemeteries cover hundreds of acres in Boston. Meanwhile, the city’s starved for housing, and Mayor Michelle Wu is talking about how the city wants to “ensure we’re using every bit of land possible” for housing.

Every bit?

Graveyards are connections to the city’s history and beautiful spots for remembering loved ones. If today wasn’t Halloween, it’d feel almost indecent to even raise the question of whether, as 19th-century health authorities expected, there might be situations when the dead should be disturbed so the land could be used for “other purposes.”

But think of it this way: Regardless of whether it’s truly unique, would the city have been better off if the Mattapan line hadn’t been built?

Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at alan.wirzbicki@globe.com.