Episode Transcript:

My name is Tanya Marsh and you’re listening to Death, et seq. We’ve been talking about funerals a lot on this podcast so far, and I wanted to switch gears this week and talk about one of my favorite topics – cemeteries. I love cemeteries. As my friends and family will attest, I am a semi-professional cemetery tourist. When I visit a new place, I want to check out the historic cemeteries. When I visit a place that I’ve been dozens of times, I still want to check out the cemeteries. So in a new series that I’m going to call “Cemetery Tourism,” I’ll be looking at different clusters of cemeteries that share similar characteristics or a similar history. I’m going to start the series in the Northeastern United States, in two of our earliest urban centers — New York City and Boston. Both of these cities were founded in the mid-1600s, and their early cemeteries share some common characteristics, but they also differed in important ways because of the people who founded those two cities.

American cemeteries are different from cemeteries anywhere else in the world, for a couple of reasons. In the colonial era, we were obviously heavily influenced by the law of England and the social norms that had been established there and carried here. The England of the 17th century had an established church – the Church of England. The theology of the Church of England placed great importance on burial in consecrated ground. So the law of England reflected the assumption that all people in good standing with the church and entitled to burial within the church would be buried in their local parish churchyard. There were people that weren’t in good standing, or members of other religions, so allowances had to be made for them too, but the vast majority of people were buried in the local parish churchyard owned by the Church of England. That’s just how it was set up.

But colonial America was a fairly diverse place. For example, Puritan colonists from England of course settled Massachusetts Bay Colony, while a more diverse group of English, Dutch, and German immigrants settled the former New Amsterdam, there were all kinds of ethnic groups and faiths on William Penn’s land, and the English Virginia Company established settlements focused on economics rather than religious liberty. Each of the colonies was different from the English system, but they were also each different from each other. These realities forced Americans to innovate. Massachusetts established (and still retains) a law that each town must create a burying ground for the use of residents and strangers. Unlike the English system, these are secular cemeteries, owned and managed by the government. In the densely populated cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, cemeteries were established downtown and despite practices designed to maximize the capacity of cemeteries, soon became overcrowded. In the Chesapeake, where the population was more widely dispersed, family burying grounds were established in addition to more traditional churchyards. Although the location of American burials differed from the uniform English precedent, other aspects of the process were the same during colonial times. Remains were wrapped in a shroud or encased in a wood coffin, then placed in the earth, a family tomb, or a mausoleum. Americans originally followed other European Christian customs—most graves were not individually memorialized and many contained the remains of more than one person.

American disposition practices shifted after the Civil War. Embalming was rarely practiced before the war. During the war, a crude method of embalming was used to stabilize the remains of wealthier men, primarily on the Union side, so they could be sent home for burial. After the Civil War, undertakers trained in embalming evolved into funeral directors. Into the twentieth century, death moved from the home to the hospital; and the ceremonies surrounding death moved from the parlor to the funeral parlor. Undertaking had once been a complementary profession for carpenters—they could build the coffin and transport the remains to the cemetery. But the Industrial Revolution moved casket production from small workshops to factories, particularly after World War II. “Modern business principles” were applied to create modern cemeteries, owned by for-profit companies in many states, larger in scale and designed to minimize the costs of maintenance. These companies benefited from laws that gave great deference to cemetery owners—traditionally families, religious organizations and municipalities—to establish their own rules and regulations. Modern cemeteries adopted rules that required concrete and/or steel vaults or grave liners that would encase the coffin and prevent the uneven terrain that follows grave collapse. These companies also adopted rules that limited graves to a single interment. The cumulative effect is a very different set of practices than existed before the Civil War. Nearly all modern graves in the United States are dedicated in perpetuity to the remains of a single individual, memorialized with a tombstone.

On today’s episode, I’ll talk about the history and development of cemeteries in New York City and Boston. If you’re interested in photographs and maps, be sure to check out the show notes at the podcast’s website – www.deathetseq.com.

The Dutch first settled New Amsterdam, then just the southern tip of Manhattan, in 1624. A detailed city map called the Castello Plan was created in 1660 – it shows virtually every structure that existed in New Amsterdam at that time. In 1664, four English frigates sailed into New Amsterdam’s harbor and demanded the surrender of New Netherlands. Articles of Capitulation were signed that September and in 1665, New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as New York City. The settlement was named for the Duke of York, the brother of the English King Charles II who later became King James II.

During most of the 17th century, even after the English took over, the Reformed Dutch Church was the dominant religious authority in New Amsterdam/New York. There were scattered Congregational, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in the region, as well as Quakers, Catholics, and a few Jews. With the English in 1665, however, also came the established Church of England.

One of the first significant cemeteries in New York City was established in the 1630s on the west side of Broadway, a little north of Morris Street. It was referred to as the “Old Graveyard” In 1656, there was a petition to “divide the Old Graveyard which is wholly in ruins, into lots to be built upon, and to make another Graveyard south of the Fort.” Apparently it persisted until at least 1665, when a collection was made to repair the graveyard because it was “very open and unfenced, so that the hogs root in the same.” By 1677, however, the graveyard had been cut up into four building lots and sold at auction to the highest bidder. There is no record regarding where the graves from this “Old Graveyard” were moved, but construction on the site more than a century later uncovered “a great many skulls and other relics of humanity,” so it sounds like perhaps they weren’t moved at all. Some things in Poltergeist are real, people.

In 1662, the Dutch established a new burial ground on Broadway, on a parcel that was then located outside the city’s gates. That burial ground became a part of the Trinity churchyard when Trinity Church was established in thirty years later.

In 1693, the New York Assembly passed an act to build several Episcopal churches in New York City and “all the inhabitants were compelled to support the Church of England, whatever might be their religious opinion.” In 1696, a plot of land stretching 310 feet from Rector Street to the Dutch burial ground that had been established on Broadway in 1662 was acquired by the Episcopalians and the Charter of Trinity Church was issued on May 6, 1697. The charter declared:

“[Trinity Church] situate in and near the street called the Broadway, within our said city of New York, and the ground thereunto adjoining, enclosed and used for a cemetery or church-yard, shall be the parish church, and church-yard of the parish of Trinity Church … and the same is hereby declared to be forever separated and dedicated to the service of God, and to be applied thereunto for the use and behalf of the inhabitants … within our said city of New York, in communion with our said Protestant Church of England.”

By the time of the Revolution, the churchyard at Trinity, including the old portion that had been the Dutch burial ground, was said to contain 160,000 graves.

In 1847 a proposal to extend Albany Street to connect it with Pine Street would have disturbed the northern portion of the Trinity Church churchyard, part of the 1662 Dutch burial ground. A government report advocated against the extension:

“[The burial ground] was established by the Dutch on their first settlement... It is nearly a century older than the other sections of the yard. It was originally a valley, about thirty feet lower at its extreme depth than the present surface, and has undergone successive fillings, as the density of interments rendered it necessary, to raise the land until it reached the present surface: so that the earth now, to a depth of several feet below the original, and thence to the present time of interment, is in truth filled with human remains, or rather composed of human ashes. The bodies buried there were [approximately 30,000 to 40,000] persons of several generations, and of all ages, sects and conditions, including a large number of the officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War, who died whilst in British captivity; and almost every old family that is or ever was in this city, has friends or connections lying there.”