LETTER OF DR. BIGELOW. 115 



their pecuniary prosperity being our prosperity, the free 

 use of the Library Eoom or either Hall be with pleas- 

 ure tendered for the purpose stated. This courtesy has 

 ever since been shown to the Proprietors of Mount 

 Auburn, and thus the child has once a year come under 

 the parental roof. 



In September of the same year, Dr. Bigelow, feeling 

 that the benefit which he had conferred on the Society, 

 through his services to Mount Auburn, had not received 

 due acknowledgment, addressed to the Society the fol- 

 lowing letter, which it is but justice to " the only indi- 

 vidual without whom Mount Auburn would never have 

 existed " to include here, with the action of the Society 

 upon it. 



To THE PRESIDENT AND OFFICEES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HORTI- 

 CULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Gentlemen, I have had the honor to be one of the earliest 

 members and promoters of the Horticultural Society, and a mem- 

 ber of its first board of officers. I was the originator of the first 

 plan for a rural cemetery in this countrj 7 , and had prepared and 

 submitted to various persons and meetings, previous to the incor- 

 poration of this Society, the plan for a landscape garden containing 

 private lots for family interments ; being precisely what Mount 

 Auburn now is. 



After several years of inquiry for a suitable place, I succeeded 

 in obtaining from Mr. Brimmer, for the desired purpose, the refusal 

 of the land which has since constituted Mount Auburn, for the 

 price of six thousand dollars. This overture I submitted to 

 the officers of the Horticultural Society soon after its incorpora- 

 tion, and urged upon their notice the expediency of uniting an 

 ornamental cemetery with their other objects, thus combining a 

 public good with prospective pecuniary advantage to the new 

 Society, which was then without funds, and had proposed no 

 other objects than such as were strictly horticultural. My pro- 

 posal was accepted by them ; and the results at Mount Auburn 

 and in Boston are visible at the present day. 



