Seek Fund to Preserve Old Gravesend Cemetery

    Between Gravesend avenue, Lake street and the Village road is the oldest public cemetery in Kings County, having been established nearly 400 years ago and containing the names of the thirty-nine patentees of Gravesend, settled by Lady Deborah Moody in 1659. . .

    . . . Most of the headstones of a date earlier than the Eighteenth Century are in the same condition [inscription indecipherable by the action of time and the elements], though there are many of those over a hundred years old still to be easily read. They mark the graves of Thomas Tilton, Samuel Holmes, John Lake, William Compton, Samuel Spicer, James Hubbard, John Tilton, John Bowne, John Griggs, Bayrent Juriansen, Obadiah Wilkinson, Ralph Cardell, Thomas D. Lavall, John Tilton Jr., John Cook, Nicholas Stillwell, Elias Bridges, Ann Wilkins, William Williamson, John Guinans, John Poland, John Applegate and William Golding. These were the original patentees who settled Gravesend in 1635.

    Then, too, there are also a number of other graves occupied by the Holland Dutch who later had possession of the town. Among the latter interments are those of Mrs. Alletta Ann Stillwell, who, when she died in 1910, at the age of 83, was counted the richest woman in Gravesend. Since possession was given to the commissioners under the act, there have been interred over 400 bodies, all of them being relatives of the older settlers. The majority of the interments and the advanced age of the majority of those buried, indicates the healthfulness of the vicinity. Among these are John I. Voorhees, 62; William K. Vanderbilt, 70; Anna M. Johnson, 76; Susanne Graue, 76; Louise Van Sicklen, 73; Sarah Emmens, 83; Joseph B. Denyse, 67; A. V. Stillwell, 79; Stillwell Voorhies, 80; Peter H. Rumph, 78, and his wife, age 74; Jacobus Van Sicklen, 84; John Denyse, 63; Mary Morris, 76; David Snedeker, 87; John Johnson, 72; Gertrude Ryder, 83; William H. Morris, 75; Isaac Ryder, 63; Clara Hambeck, 83; Catherine Stillwell, 73; James R. Aldrich, 70; Cather Van Riper, 67; Sarah Snedeker, 75; Daniel C. Lake, 70; Jane Harland, 85; John H. Kouwenhoven, 76; Joachim Harloff, 89, and Lucy Caldwell, 103.

    The only person having a plot there who was not related to the early descendants was John Y. McKane. He had one of the finest plots in the cemetery, which is still preserved, and in which a brother, Robert J. McKane, is buried. His own remains are interred in Greenwood Cemetery. . .

~ Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York), Sun., 22 Jul 1917, pg. 6

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Contributed by Heather Birtciel, Jul 2023:

Son of Phebe Aldrich (1801 – 1844).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Contributed by R. Research, Mar 2024:

Veteran.