1812 Cemetery-Eastern Promenade

Located on the Eastern Promenade at the foot of Quebec Street, this little-known mass grave is marked by a boulder that commemorates the communal graves of 21 POW's from the War of 1812. 

From a 1987 memo by John DiPaolo:

"The story of the mass grave goes back to December 23, 1812, when the British warship, HMS Regulus, en route from Quebec to Boston with American soldiers taken prisoner at the battle of Queenstown, put into the Port of Portland under the flag of truce and anchored. Their leader was Lt. Colonel Winfield Scott, later known as 'Old Fuss and Feathers' in the US Army. Many of the prisoners aboard were sick with fever, malnutrition, and dysentery. The 24 most severely ill were landed and housed in the Town Hospital on the Eastern Promenade on December 29th, according to the old records. Within a month, 21 of these prisoners had died. They were buried in a mass grave at the foot of Quebec Street. The bronze plaque affixed to the boulder that marked the site was imprinted with the names of the soldiers buried there in 1887."