AmericanAncestors.org, the database of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has added a collection of burial records from Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery in East Watertown, MA.
The records were gathered by cemetery volunteer researcher William (Bill) McEvoy and contain much more than just burial register data and headstone transcriptions, as he went on to hunt down missing details of the deceased in vital records, plot sales, obituaries and other collections. This resulted in a dataset holding some 46,000 names in rich records dating from 1854 to 1980.
The majority of the people buried at Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery resided in the North End, Charlestown and East Boston sections of Boston. The next most common place of residence was Cambridge, followed by Somerville. The vast majority of the cemetery lots were sold by the end of 1865. They were primarily purchased by people who were born in Ireland. It is likely that the residents of the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery immigrated around the time of the First Great Irish Famine or are their descendants. The next country of origin by purchasers, although a very small percentage, were people born in the Azores.
AmericanAncestors now offers a fully indexed record set to the collection (link above). It’s a members-only database, so it can’t be viewed on a free guest account.
If you don’t have a subscription, you might like to search a simple excel spreadsheet hosted by The Historical Society of Watertown’s website. This can be downloaded, free of charge, here: Spreadsheet: Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery: East Watertown, MA.