Jessica Siraco, left, executive director of the Friends of Evergreen Cemetery, and Sue Devine, a member of the group, give a tour of the park where some key players in the Portland Rum Riot of 1855 are buried.

The grave of Neal Dow, a former Portland mayor who was a proponent of prohibition and a key player in the Portland Rum Riot of 1855, stands in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.

The former Portland City Hall stood on Congress Street, near today’s Monument Square, where the Portland Rum Riot took place.

Neal Dow, known as the Father of Prohibition, was mayor when the Portland Rum Riot occurred. Dow was instrumental in Maine's banning of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in 1851. What became widely known as The Maine Law was a forerunner of national Prohibition from 1920 to 1933.

Evergreen Cemetery in Portland is home to the grave of Nathan Clifford, a former U.S. attorney general who prosecuted Mayor Neal Dow for allegedly violating Maine’s prohibition law in the wake of the Portland Rum Riot of June 2, 1855. Dow was acquitted. Clifford also represented Maine in Congress and later became a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Jessica Siraco and Sue Devine pause in front of Saint John Smith’s grave during a tour of Evergreeen Cemetery on Friday. Smith was a citizen who called for an investigation into the melancholy transactions of alcohol.