Buried: Old North Cemetery, Concord, New Hampshire
Fourteenth President - 1853-1857
Born: November 23, 1804, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire
Died: 4:40 a.m. on October 8, 1869, in Concord, New Hampshire
Age at death: 64
Cause of death: Stomach inflammation
Final words: Unknown
Admission to Old North Cemetery: Free
Franklin Pierce was the only presidential candidate to have his campaign biography penned by a literary immortal, in this case Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both native New Englanders, the two men were college classmates and lifelong friends.
Labeled by many historians as one of our less successful presidents, Franklin Pierce lost the nomination for a second term to James Buchanan in 1856. He was among the first presidents to enjoy financial stability after leaving the White House. Nonetheless, his twelve-year retirement was not a happy one. Since the eve of Pierce’s inauguration, when their son Bennie was killed in a train accident, both Pierce and his wife Jane battled depression. Already prone to heavy drinking, Pierce’s problem grew worse after returning home to Concord, New Hampshire. Hoping to stave off melancholy, Franklin and Jane Pierce spent some time in Europe and the Bahamas, but with little improvement.
Pierce’s gravestone
Upon his return to Concord in 1860, Pierce spoke sympathetically of the Confederacy. Although he stopped shy of supporting secession, he was branded a traitor and was ostracized for the rest of his life. When Jane died of tuberculosis in 1863, the former president was truly alone.
By the summer of 1869, Pierce was suffering from dropsy, an accumulation of fluids in his body. He died of the disease at 4:40 a.m. on October 8, 1869, at the age of sixty-four. News of his poor health had been telegraphed frequently across the country, so his death came as no surprise.
Despite his unpopularity in his home state, Franklin Pierce was given the standard honors for a former president. For three days, his body, resting in a coffin covered in black cloth, lay in state with a large floral cross suspended overhead in Doric Hall at the New Hampshire State Capitol.
On October 11 twelve pallbearers, all fellow members of the state bar, carried the casket to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Concord. A procession of local citizens and public school students followed the cortege. At the mayor’s request, all local businesses closed for the duration of the funeral service. On order from President Grant, public buildings in Washington were draped in mourning. Flags were lowered to half mast in cities across the country, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard fired a thirty-one-gun salute in Pierce’s honor.
Dr. John Splaine, C-SPAN’s consulting historian, points to the historic marker at the Old North Cemetery
He was buried in Concord’s Old North Cemetery alongside his wife and their three children. In 1914, after much debate, the state of New Hampshire erected a bronze statue of Pierce on the capitol grounds and in 1946 finally placed a granite memorial at his grave.
Touring Franklin Pierce’s Tomb at the Old North Cemetery
The Old North Cemetery is located in Concord, New Hampshire.
From Concord State Capitol: From the capitol, drive north on Main Street to Park Street. Turn left onto Park Street. Drive 0.2 miles to State Street. Continue on State Street for another 0.7 miles until you reach Old North Cemetery. Parking is available on State Street. Inside the Old North Cemetery, walk straight ahead for approximately seventy-five feet. From that point, walk ten feet to the right to President Pierce’s grave. The Old North Cemetery is open every day during daylight hours. Admission is free.
Franklin Pierce outlived his wife and three children. They are buried with him in the Old North Cemetery.
For Additional Information
New Hampshire
Historical Society
30 Park Street
Concord, NH 03301
Phone: (603) 856-0641
www.nhhistory.org
City of Concord
41 Green Street
Concord, NH 03301
Phone: (603) 225-8570
www.onconcord.com
“…there is undoubtedly a tragic quality to America’s fourteenth president.”
—Richard Norton Smith
Though hardly a figure of Shakespearian dimensions, there is undoubtedly a tragic quality to America’s fourteenth president. The youngest ever to hold that office when he was sworn in 1853, whatever chance he had for success was crushed, along with his eleven-year-old son, Bennie, killed a few weeks earlier in a horrible train wreck as his parents looked on. For Bennie’s mother, Jane, a strict Calvinist who blamed her husband’s political ambitions for the loss of their child, the White House was a well-furnished purgatory. Her death in December 1863, wounded Pierce’s spirit, while the passing of his dearest friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the following spring, dramatized the political ostracism caused by Pierce’s pro-southern record in office. At Hawthorne’s funeral the former president was excluded from the ranks of pallbearers, which included the likes of Emerson, Longfellow, and Whittier. Instead, Pierce remained behind the other mourners in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, to scatter a few blossoms into the open grave.
When his own casket was borne into Saint Paul’s in October 1869, the ceremonies were formalistic, the grief contained. Concord’s farewell to its “Man Who Might Have Been” recalled nothing so much as Longfellow’s lyric written for Hawthorne’s obsequies.
“How beautiful it was,
that one bright day
In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could
not chase away
The omnipresent pain.”
—RNS