LEWISTON — Local historian Doug Hodgkin will lead identical tours of Riverside Cemetery, the burial place for many of the city’s most prominent citizens, on Saturday, June 23, at 10 a.m. and again on Sunday, June 24, at 2 p.m.

The tours are part of an annual series of programs sponsored by the Androscoggin Historical Society, and are being conducted twice in order to split the number of people into manageable groups.

Industrialists, merchants, religious leaders and 22 Lewiston mayors and other political figures of the 19th and early 20th centuries are buried in Riverside Cemetery.

Hodgkin will tell stories of some of the people who have left their marks on the city —  streets are named after them, many of their homes are prominent and their namesake industrial buildings still exist.

The cemetery is similar in concept to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., which was founded in 1831 as “America’s first garden cemetery.” Its classical monuments were set in a landscaped terrain, a distinct break with Colonial-era burying grounds and church-affiliated graveyards.

The tour will begin at the cemetery entrance at the corner of Riverside and Summer streets. Park along those streets. It will be held rain or shine except in downpours or high winds. Hodgkin said, “Come prepared. Also wear comfortable walking shoes; it’s a large cemetery and we’ll cover a lot of ground.”

There will be no charge. As a substitute for a lecture originally scheduled for June, it is considered a part of the society’s regular programming. Donations will be accepted.

Hodgkin is a retired Bates College professor of political science and has written eight books on local history. His topics have included a comprehensive history of Lewiston before the Civil War, the Lewiston Grange, the Lewiston and Auburn Railroad and Auburn Baptist churches on Court Street. He also compiled a pictorial history of Lewiston and a two-volume transcription of Lewiston’s town records.

A Lewiston native, Hodgkin graduated from Lewiston High School and has degrees from Yale and Duke Universities. He is currently a member of the Lewiston Historic Preservation Review Board and editor of the Androscoggin Historical Society newsletter.