Old Sloatsburg Cemetery
The Old Sloatsburg Cemetery is a cemetery at the end of Richard Street in Sloatsburg , New York in the United States. Originally the cemetery was the burial place of John Sloat , a victim of the American Revolutionary War in 1781. After more than half a century no further burials took place here, the cemetery was expanded several times and at the time of the last burial in 1949 contained about 1200 graves.
The landscape of the cemetery reflects several epochs of cemetery design. At the end of the 20th century, the cemetery was abandoned and neglected, and only a few family graves were tended by the respective families. It was not until the mid-1990s that Sloatsburg's citizens organized a redevelopment of the site, which in 1999 led to the cemetery being entered in the National Register of Historic Places . He has been maintained by the community ever since.
object
The cemetery is located on a rectangular five acres (about two hectares ) big plot of land in the western part of the town, south of Eagle Valley Road and west of New York State Route 17 . The area of the cemetery slopes to the west to a wood, in the eastern area on a drum-shaped hill, about six meters higher, on the eastern boundary of the cemetery are the graves of the Sloat family. The oldest of the 30 tombstones here dates back to 1781 and reminds of John Sloat, the others date from after 1838. A gravel driveway leads from Eagle Valley Road to the northeast corner of the cemetery and initially to a ring road where the graves are located of the Sloat family. Further west, near the younger graves, there is another ring path, which is connected to the end of Richards Road by a dirt path and is the only other public access to the cemetery. Three groups of trees are distributed on the otherwise open property.
To the west of it is a section known as "The Hill" with 72 gravestones dated 1852, probably the year the cemetery was generally opened. These square tombs with an edge length of 20 feet (around six meters) are laid out in a strict grid pattern. This winding access section is typical of rural cemetery architecture in the United States in the mid-19th century.
The extensions from the beginning of the 20th century to the west still adhere to the strict grid, but are flatter. The westernmost section - known as the "Waldron section" - was named after an undertaker who was responsible for many of the graves dug here from the 1920s. Four mausoleums are striking here , one of which is reminiscent of a girl who was killed in an accident in 1933 as a “martyr of the automobile age” . Some nearby terraced areas were likely intended for future expansion.
history
When the War of Independence ended in 1781, John Sloat was mistakenly killed near the family home by one of the security guards his father had hired. He was buried in what is now the section of the cemetery that housed the family graves. His son, John D. Sloat , eventually became California's first governor .
No other Sloat family member is known to have been buried on the site before 1832. The cemetery remained an exclusive burial site for members of the family until 1852, when other residents of the growing community were also buried here. In 1878 a sponsoring association was founded, the Sloatsburg Cemetery Association , so that the cemetery was no longer maintained by the family. The following year, the association bought 2.7 acres of land from another family and began selling individual graves instead of family graves. The original section with the graves of the Sloats was returned by the association in 1896 to William Sloat. In 1906 and again in 1912 another two acres were added to the west of the cemetery. The local undertaker Warren Waldron eventually bought the last lot in the west and began offering graves. The association sold the last grave in 1936 and disbanded. Thirteen years later, in 1949, the last burial took place in the cemetery.
In the following years nobody cared about the condition of the cemetery, which fell to the Town of Ramapo , to which Sloatsburg belongs. Some of the families continued to tend their family graves, as a whole the cemetery was forgotten and overgrown, tombstones were vandalized and even stolen. It is believed that more than six hundred graves are unmarked today. Almost half a century later, the local people organized a joint clean-up operation and have kept the cemetery in order ever since.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e John Bonafide: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Old Sloatsburg Cemetery ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . February 1999. Retrieved March 17, 2009.
- ^ Eugene Kuykendall: Old Cemetery ( English ) Village of Sloatsburg. 2004. Retrieved March 17, 2009.
Coordinates: 41 ° 9 ′ 13 " N , 74 ° 11 ′ 45" W.