Historical research, by Auburndale resident Bill McEvoy is being featured in the Watertown News. McEvoy researched and profiled nine nurses and fifteen Clergy who served in the Civil War and are buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. The nine nurses were featured as part of National Nurses Week.
McEvoy is a veteran who served as an Army Military Police Sergeant (1968-1971), and he and his wife Lucille, have resided in Auburndale since 1974. For 23 years, he was Magistrate at the District Court in Newton, and upon his retirement in 2009, he served as pro-bono Magistrate at the Dedham District Court until 2019.
McEvoy developed his lifelong interest in America History in college, graduating from Bentley College and Suffolk University, and earned his master’s degree at Boston College, where he was accepted into the Dr. Thomas O’Connor colloquium covering the period from the founding of Jamestown to the Civil War.
Since 2009, McEvoy has been an independent historical researcher at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. While many of his projects have involved veterans of all eras, he has a particular interest in those who served in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and he has written about “The Lives of the Not so Rich and Famous” buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery’s public lots from 1831 to the early 1900s, during the emergence of the middle class.
McEvoy is the author of three books focusing on the hardships and tragedies of immigrants who died from 1850 to 1920. They contain statistical graphs illustrating the impact of poverty and neglect impacting early mortality rates. They are available for free download here:
- Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery, at East Watertown
- Rainsford Island, A Boston Harbor, Case Study of Public Neglect and Private Activism, edited by contributing author, Robin Hazard Ray
- The biography of Alice North Towne Lincoln
In 2010, McEvoy became a member of the newly formed volunteer program at the Bedford Veterans Hospital, No Veteran Dies Alone. His research on the 15 Clergy, includes Rev. Arthur Fuller, who was killed on the first day of the Battle of Fredericksburg and served as a minister at the Unitarian Church in West Newton, will be highlighted later this month.
