Hildreth Cemetery is a small cemetery located on Hildreth Street at Sutherland and By Streets in the Centralville neighborhood of Lowell, Massachusetts. The cemetery's history dates back to the mid-18th century, when it was designated as a burial ground by Major Ephraim Hildreth before his death in 1740. Though located within the Lowell city limits, it is actually administered by the nearby town of Dracut because the cemetery was built when Centralville was still a part of Dracut. In 1913, the City of Lowell attempted to sell the cemetery after the Town of Dracut neglected to pay a tax on a new sidewalk on Hildreth Street; this would have resulted in the forced relocation of many of the remains at the cemetery. After an injunction in Suffolk County court to prevent the sale, the town continues to maintain the cemetery. The nearby private cemetery containing the graves of General Benjamin Butler and his wife, Sarah Hildreth, was not affected.
On October 3, 2009, a teenager from Centralville became angry over a "personal matter" and damaged over 150 headstones in Hildreth Cemetery, many of them around two centuries old. 90 of them were damaged beyond repair due to age or the materials they were made from. The cost of the damage was estimated to be around $10,000. The Hildreth Family Cemetery, gated and locked all year, was untouched. The perpetrator turned himself in two weeks later upon seeing pictures of the destroyed headstones in the Lowell Sun. In June 2010, the town of Dracut authorized the allocation of $30,000 towards the repair of Hildreth Cemetery, so that the work would begin before the winter. In October, work began on the restoration. Several stones were repaired on site, as they were merely knocked over or were easily repaired, but those damaged beyond repair were flagged for replacement by Hudson Monuments in Hudson, New Hampshire. Much of the work was completed by March 2011.
Hildreth Family Cemetery
The Hildreth family's private cemetery is set behind the public cemetery and entered via two locked gates accessible only from Hildreth Street. The cemetery is closed all year, with the exception of the annual commemoration of General Butler's birthday and the replacement of the flag, held the first Sunday in November. Several generations of the Hildreth family are buried in the cemetery. The more well-known members include:
Adelbert Ames : A highly decorated Union general during the Civil War, who served as a U.S. Senator and Governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction. He married Butler's daughter Blanche in 1870, while serving in the Senate.
Charlotte Ellison Butler : Benjamin Butler's mother.
* Butler Ames : West Point graduate and Colonel in the U.S. Army during the Spanish–American War and Congressman from Massachusetts. His wife Fifille Willis Ames is buried alongside him.
* Edith Ames Stevens and her husband C. Brooks Stevens
* Sarah Ames
* Blanche Ames Ames : Artist and suffragist, who wrote the first full-length biography on her father in response to the biased interpretation of his administration of Mississippi in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
