A Tour of Lost Cemeteries

Just in time for Halloween, All Over Albany (a site you should be reading daily) gave this blog a much appreciated shout-out in a post about Washington Park's previous incarnation as the State Street Burying Grounds.  

Below is a brief tour of sorts of some other former burial grounds in Albany.  It appeared in Charles Mooney's column (always a source of fascinating bits and pieces of local history) in the Knickerbocker News on October 14, 1961.

We ran across John E. Boos this week and, as we customarily do, asked Albany's famed authority on Abraham Lincoln if he had a story to tell. Mr. Boos, who is a man of a few thousand words when occasion demands, took a deep breath and said, to wit:

“Your column has been filled so much with butchers, and bakers, and candlestick makers, old buildings, old people, and Otto de Heus's sheet music, why not change to a more solemn subject and asked if the average citizen remembers or ever heard of the many cemeteries in the city?”

“There was a cemetery on Arbor Hill bounded by Ten Broeck Street, Second Street, Hall Place and Ten Broeck Place – now, and for many years a fenced-in lawn, although it could have been a more useful place as a neighborhood playground.

The Ten Broeck family erected a vault at Livingston Avenue and Swan Street in which was entombed the remains of Generals Philip Schuyler and Abraham Ten Broeck, both heroes of the Battle of Saratoga.

“When the vault began to crumble, the remains were removed to Albany Rural Cemetery, and General Ten Broeck's grave has never been marked, though there is a monument honoring him on the battlefield.

“To honor Col. John Mills and Gen. Solomon Van Rensselaer, they were buried near the Washington Avenue side of Capitol Park, one having been killed at Sackets Harbor in the War of 1812 and the other severely wounded at Queenstown Heights in the same war. Their remains were later removed to Rural Cemetery where they now rest, the state having erected a monument on Mills' resting place.

“At the foot of State Street, under the floor of the Reformed Church, a number of members were buried. The remains were removed in 1818 to a new cemetery on Beaver Street where a new church had been erected. (The National Commercial Bank's Heartland Building now covers the site).

“Peter Schuyler, Albany's first mayor, was buried in the church, and possibly his remains still rest in the Beaver Street plot.

“There was a cemetery on the south side of Central Avenue above Watervliet Avenue, where I believe the members of St. John's Lutheran Church were buried. There was another Lutheran cemetery on the State Street side of Washington Park at Willett Street, the bodies having been removed when the park was laid out.

“On Washington Avenue above Partridge Street was St. Mary's Cemetery, overgrown with weeds and brush when the bodies were removed to a new resting place in St. Agnes Cemetery, while at Hamilton and South Pearl Streets the Hallenbeck family'sburial plot covered a half acres for more than 100 years.”

John Boos, although he didn't say so in so many words, appears to regret some of Albany's old cemeteries were removed to make way for civic and industrial progress, for he added:

“The graves of early citizens are highly revered in Boston, and one who rambles down its crooked streets will still find the old cemeteries in the business section of the city. Kings Chapel, Granary and Old North Church have visitors from all over the nation who delight in reading the quaint inscriptions on the tombstones.”

The Half Moon Sailing Away

Albany has a pretty poor record when it comes to keeping and promoting its history.  Now, there is a good chance that we will lose the Half Moon, the beautiful replica of Henry Hudson's ship which explored this area in 1609.

Replica Half Moon May Move To The Netherlands

It would be a wonderful thing if people could rally around keeping the ship here.  Otherwise, the only Half Moon that we will have left will be the historic weather-vane atop the old D&H Building on Broadway.

For more information on the ship and its activities...or to make a donation...please see their site:

The Half Moon

See also:  Helping History

Not The Right Stones

 

The Lake House is Washington Park has a series of panels which illustrate the Park's history.  They're generally excellent, include a number of vintage photos and maps, and are definitely worth stepping inside to view.

The panel which interests me the most is, not surprisingly, the one which notes the history of the Park's location as a municipal cemetery.  The State Street Burying Grounds served as the not-so-final resting place for thousands of local residents until it closed in 1868 and the remains moved to the Church Grounds section at the Albany Rural Cemetery.

The panel in question includes a detail of an antique map of Albany showing the position of the Burying Grounds and its divisions among various congregations.  Two headstones are included as representing the various graves at the Burying Grounds and therein lies an inaccuracy.

It is very unlikely that either gravestone shown on the panel was ever in the State Street Burying Grounds.

The upper stone shown on the right is one of the most distinctive gravestones in the Church Grounds.  Though it has eroded badly in recent years, it is an incredible example of a colonial headstone carved with a winged skull;  an "momento mori" intended to remind the living of their own eventual death.  The inscription is framed with heavy vines and the lettering is finely carved.  It was carved for the grave of Elyse Gansevoort Winne who died in 1728 and was laid to rest in the graveyard of the Dutch Reformed Church which was then on South Pearl Street near Hudson Avenue. When that graveyard was eventually removed, a number of its oldest stones and remains were placed in a special vault beneath the tower of the Middle Dutch Church which was erected nearby on South Pearl Street.  These same headstones and remains were later placed in a vault beneath the Madison Avenue Reformed Church, as noted in this article by John Walcott.  Those stones and remains  - including Elyse Winne's - were eventually placed in the Church Grounds at the Albany Rural Cemetery, but did not spend time in the State Street Burying Grounds and was therefore not included in the Common Council inventory of the Burying Grounds.

The lower stone depicted is a plain brown sandstone marker from the grave of Dick who is identified in the inscription as a slave of John F. Pruyn who died in 1799.  This stone now rests in the African Methodist Episcopal section of the Church Grounds.  Dick may or may not have been originally buried in the State Street Burying Grounds.  He does not appear in the massive list of graves inventoried by the Albany Common Council prior to the removal to the Rural Cemetery.  However, that list is not complete.  There are quite a few graves now in the Church Grounds that were not printed in the inventory, perhaps omitted by mistake as the stones were transcribed.  He may have originally been buried in the previous municipal cemetery which stood just off Eagle Street south of the State Capitol.  This cemetery received burials from around 1789 to 1799, the same year Dick died.  He may have been buried in one of the small graveyards identified on period maps as "Negro Burying Grounds".

Or it's very possible the young man was buried in the same graveyard as Elyse Winne.  Dick's master was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and may have arranged for Dick to be interred in a family plot in the congregation's churchyard.  This would account for why Dick's name also does not appear on Common Council inventory.  Like Elyse Winne, Dick and his gravestone would have lain in the vault beneath the Madison Avenue Reformed Church before being eventually brought to the Rural Cemetery.

In that case, neither stone is representative of the graves cleared from the State Street Burying Grounds.  Also, the caption identifies the skull stone as belonging to Elyse Wenne Huys.  The word "huys" is not part of her surname, but part of the old phrase "huys vrouw" or "housewife."

See also:  Jeremiah Field and The Headstone That Was Not Lost, The Oldest Stones (includes a larger photo of the Elyse Winne stone),and Dick.