The First Burials in Albany Rural Cemetery- 1845

A tall monument marked with the name “Strain” stands at the edge of a steep hill at the eastern edge of the North Ridge. It is a fairly simple tombstone by Albany marble cutter John Dixon,but an inscription on its south face tells that it marks “The First Interment In The Cemetary” (note the incorrect spelling of cemetery).

These first burials at the Rural Cemetery took place in May, 1845. Twenty-one year old David Strain died of consumption on October 24, 1844, just a few weeks after the consecration. Buried at the same time were Rebecca and Isabelle Strain. Rebecca was an infant sister who died in 1829. The records don’t indicate twenty-five year old Isabelle’s relationship to David. She may have been his paternal aunt; she died of an inflammation of the brain in 1819.

While the Cemetery had already been dedicated when he died, it was not yet completed; there was still landscaping required, new paths to be laid out, and other improvements to be made. It is likely that young David’s remains would have been placed in one of the public receiving vaults still in use at the old State Street Burying Grounds until the family plot was ready to receive him, along with Rebecca and Isabelle.

A sentimental poem later published in the Albany Argus hints that David may have gone abroad to seek a cure and reads: “Sleep on, it seems but yesterday,Thou wert in foreign lands, Where thou wert met by glowing hearts, And more than friendly hands. When all the spells their love had tried Could not thy health restore, Weary and faint, you dared the sea To reach thy home once more.”

David and Rebecca were children of Albany soap and candle manufacturer Joseph Strain. His soap and candle factory stood at 54 Church Street in Albany, his residence was a few doors away at 63 Church. The family’s summer home still stands at the corner of Broadway and McDonald Circle in Menands. For many years, it served as the Home For Aged Men.

The Strain family plot is located on what was originally called Kennisau Hill and later renamed Landscape Hill. It is now simply Lot 46, Section 6.

The Grim Past of Van Rensselaer Park

Located between the vacant St. Joseph’s Church and the Ten Broeck Mansion (identified on the 1876 map below as the property of Thomas W. Olcott), Van Rensselaer Park is a small and pretty wedge of urban greenspace.

Framed by Ten Broeck Street, Ten Broeck Place, Hall Place, and Second Street, it features a modern playground and an elegant 19th-century iron fence. Its history, however, goes back to the mid-18th century and the Patroons of Rensselaerwyck.

On October 31 1764, Stephen Van Rensselaer II deeded this parcel of land to the City of Albany specifically for the purpose of a cemetery. At the time, this area was known as “The Colonie,” though by 1808 it was annexed to the city proper.

Known variously over the years as the Colonie Burial Ground, the Arbor Hill Burial Ground, and the Van Rensselaer Burial Ground, the Patroon intended that the lot be used held by the city “on the condition that the same should not be applied to any private purpose or secular use, but should remain as a burial ground or cemetery for all persons in the manor of Rensselaerwyck.”

The Van Rensselaer Burial Ground is not to be confused with the private vault which was later built on the grounds of the Van Rensselaer Manor House for the interment of the Patroon’s own family and which was later torn down in favor of a large plot at the Albany Rural Cemetery.

As with the municipal State Street Burying Grounds at the western edge of the city, the little Arbor Hill Burial Ground eventually became an eyesore. The streets around it were filling up with elegant new houses. Construction and improvements to the surrounding streets altered the grade of the land around the old cemetery. Removal of the surrounding soil raised the burial grounds edges to an embankment of some fifteen feet. Bones and coffins were often exposed as sand was removed. Sometimes the remains tumbled into adjacent lots. The surrounding wooden fence was in ruins.

The well-to-do residents of Ten Broeck Triangle were not pleased to see gloomy old tombstones and exposed remains from their windows and stoops. Local property owners, including Joseph Hall (the namesake of Hall Place), advocated for its removal.

An 1844 report to the Common Council observed:

“The whole presents a neglected and ruinous aspect, which must be painful to the surviving friends of the dead, who are buried there, and a source of annoyance to a neighborhood daily becoming more populous, notwithstanding the obstacle to its growth which this burying ground presents…..would not be expedient to continue to use this ground for future interments. The public are becoming every day more convinced of the inconveniences and painful associations, as well as the unhealthiness of burying the dead in the midst of the habitations of the living, and it is to be hoped that the practice with us, as it is in very many cities, will be entirely discontinued. Apart from the other considerations, this ground, after all that may be done for its improvement, will still present an appearance of insecurity, which must deter most persons from allowing their friends to be buried in it. We are, however, bound to protect the remains of those who now lie there, and the question presents itself whether it is better to put the ground in as decent condition as possible, or to remove the remains to a proper place where they may remain undisturbed in future.”

One expensive proposed remedy was a new fence of varying heights to enclose the forlorn graveyard. Another proposal called for removing the old remains to a lot at the new Rural Cemetery and erecting a suitable monument over them.

“We propose then, in place of maintaining at a heavy expense to the city the present unsightly burying ground on Arbor Hill, that the remains of those buried there should be carefully removed to the new cemetery and then deposited in a vault over which a handsome monument shall be erected – on the monument the names of dead may be inscribed and it will thus stand as a perpetual memorial. Neither the growth of the city or any probable contingency will ever disturb the remains there deposited – survivors will no longer be shocked by seeing the bones of their relatives bleaching in the sun, but will feel a comfort and joy in seeing the place of their repose surrounded as it will be by the most appropriate associations, and their own pathway to the grave may be made more cheerful by the thought that the same resting place may at the appointed time receive their own remains, as well as those of their friends.”

In the end, neither plan was adopted. On October 1, 1849, Stephen Van Rensselaer III deeded the land to the city again. Now that the city held title to the land without the stipulation that it be used for burials, work began to clear the graves and transform the old boneyard into a small park (just two decades later, the State Street Burying Grounds would similarly be converted to Washington Park)

Relatives of the deceased at were given a chance to remove the bodies of their kin from the Arbor Hill Burial Grounds at their own expense; a few were indeed transferred to the Rural Cemetery. The rest would be disposed of by the city. According to a 1901 column in the Albany Evening Journal:

“A large underground vault was placed in the center of the plot and all bodies not claimed were put in the common vault and the spot covered. The bones, or what remains of them, are now reposing within the confines of the park.”

The articles and records make little or no mention of what became of the old headstones. They might have been stacked inside the vault, recycled for paving and other purposes, or simply discarded.

Originally posted  by Paula Lemire to http://albanynyhistory.blogspot.com/

Samuel Schuyler – Albany’s African American Riverboat Captain

Samuel Schuyler was born in 1781, but very little is known of his early life, though it has been speculated that he was related to THE Albany Schuylers,.

Like many other African-Americans of his era, Samuel began his working life as a laborer on Quay Street, along Albany’s thriving waterfront. By 1810, he had his own boat to haul lumber, produce, and other goods. He would expand his business interest to real estate, owning a substantial number of lots along South Pearl Street and adjoining streets.

Sometime prior to 1805, he married Mary Martin-Morin; the couple would have eleven children. Several sons would join him in business, as partners in a flour and feed store and, later, they would establish the Schuyler Towboat Company. His oldest son and namesake owned the large house at the corner of Ash Grove and Trinity Place; it was the younger Schuyler who added the distinctive cupola with fine views of the Hudson River, the primary source of the family’s fortune.

The elder Captain Schuyler died in 1842 and was buried at the Albany Rural Cemetery. An anchor carved on his monument does double duty a symbol of faith and hope and a nod to his career.

 

It’s interesting to note that, when his son and namesake died in 1894, the New York Times obituary made no mention of the family’s African-American heritage and referred to his ancestors as “the early Dutch settlers of Albany.”

Eight short stories recalling the lives of African Americans buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery

 

Mention the Albany Rural Cemetery and the most common response is, “Oh, that’s where President Arthur is buried!”

Its 467 acres contain the graves of governors, mayors, soldiers, actors, bankers, and poets, as well as works of monumental art by Erastus Dow Palmer, Robert Launitz, and Charles Calverley.

Buried here, too, are dozens of prominent figures in Albany’s African-American history — from slaves to doctors.

Here are the stories of some of those Albany residents…

Born Before The Revolution

An Albany Daily Evening Times article from 1873 reported on the death and funeral of a woman named Diana Mingo who, at 106 years (or, according to some sources, 105 years and 6 months), was said to be the oldest person buried in The Rural to date. Born in Schodack as the slave of Matthew Beekman, she was reportedly freed before New York State’s gradual emancipation began in 1799. For a time, she worked as a cook for the Van Rensselaer family at their manor house in Albany.

Mingo was well known among her friends and neighbors for her vivid recollections of the Revolution and Lafayette’s celebrated visit to Albany in 1825. She died on July 25, 1872 and her funeral was held at the African Methodist Episcopal Church on Hamilton Street. Attendance was so great that mourners overflowed the pews and sat on the pulpit steps. She was buried on the cemetery’s North Ridge in a lot owned by her niece, Mary G. Jackson. Her grave is not marked. (Lot 8, Section 99).

Soldier of the Revolution

Benjamin Lattimore, a leading member of Albany’s post-Revolution African-American community and founder of the A.M.E. Church, was born a free man in Weathersfield, Connecticut in 1761. He was living in Ulster County, New York at the beginning of the Revolution and helped his family operate a ferry there. The fifteen-year old Lattimore enlisted in the Ulster County militia in September 1776. He took part in the battle for Manhattan and, a year later, was captured by the British at Fort Montgomery near West Point. Relegated to the role of a servant by British officers, Lattimore was recovered by the Americans in Westchester County and returned to service in the Continental Army. In 1779, he visited Albany for the first time when his regiment, en route to the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys, was forced by ice to remain in the city for two weeks.

In 1794, Lattimore settled in Albany and found employment as a licensed cartman. Within five years, he had purchased several lots in the area of South Pearl Street, as well as a two-story brick home at 9 Plain Street (an area now covered by the Times Union Center). Described as a man of “irreproachable character for integrity and uprightness,” Lattimore became a pillar of early Albany’s middle class black community; he was a founding member of the Albany African Temperance Society, the first black school. This veteran of the Revolution died in April 1838 and was buried at the State Street Burying Grounds. His remains were moved to the Church Grounds section of the Rural Cemetery during the mass disinterment of the Burying Grounds in 1868. His headstone, and that of his wife are now missing. (Lot 14, Section 49)

The Two Adam Blakes

Beginning in slavery, the first Adam Blake’s life spanned from the Revolutionary War to the middle of the Civil War. Born in New York City around 1773, he was brought to Albany while still young, where he was a servant to Stephen Van Rensselaer III. As an adult, he would become manager of the household staff at the Van Rensselaer Manor. Until it was abolished by the city in 1811, he presided as the master of ceremonies of the popular Pinkster celebrations held by Albany’s black community each spring on what is now Capitol Hill. He also took part in the grand ceremonies welcoming Lafayette on his return visit to Albany in 1824, shielding the elderly French patriot from the sun with an umbrella at all times during the procession through the city. He was also one of the first depositors on record with the Albany Savings Bank after its founding in 1820. Adam Blake married Sarah Richards in 1803.

When Blake died at the age of 94 in 1864, the first Adam Blake was remembered as a “remarkable man” who “commanded respect by that high order of good breeding and courtesy to all, for which he was proverbial.” Stephen Van Rensselaer IV sent a message to his funeral at the Old Dutch Church to express regret that his own ill health preventing him from paying his respects in public.

The younger Adam Blake would found the Kenmore Hotel on Pearl Street in 1880.

According to his obituary, the younger Adam Blake was an adopted son. Raised at the Van Rensselaer Manor, where he received his early schooling alongside the Van Rensselaer children, he would later be regarded as one of the most successful black businessmen of his era. Described as “a born hotel owner” who took to the profession as instinctively “as a fish takes to water,” he first went to work as a porter in the famous Delavan House and was eventually promoted to head-waiter there. He rapidly built his reputation as a restaurant proprietor with the opening of his own establishment on Beaver Street in 1851. Well-known as “a first-class caterer for the public,” he became the owner of Congress Hall, a notable Albany hotel heavily used for lodgings, meals, and meetings by countless politicians during the state’s legislative sessions. Congress Hall, which stood at the corner of Washington Avenue and Park Street near both the old State Capitol and City Hall, ranked with the Delavan House as one of the leading Albany hotels of its era.

In 1878, Congress Hall was demolished by the state to make way for the construction of the new State Capitol. With the money he received in compensation for the building, Blake established the Kenmore Hotel at the corner of North Pearl and Columbia Streets. Designed by architect Edward Ogden, Blake’s new hotel would be described as “the most elegant structure on the finest street in Albany.” He managed the hotel until his death in 1881. Known as a generous man “who never turned away a stranger or neighbor in need, he left an estate valued at $100,000 when he died. And his widow, Catherine, successfully managed the Kenmore herself until 1887. Adam Blake II was buried in his family lot at the Rural Cemetery and memorialized with a stained glass window at the Israel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Hamilton Street. (Lot 22, Section 42)

The Riverboat Captain

A towering marble monument on the Middle Ridge overlooking the Cemetery chapel is carved with large anchors which, in this instance, symbolize both faith and the deceased’s profession — Samuel Schuyler was a successful riverboat captain. He was born in 1781, but little is known of his origins or of his connection (if any) to the family of General Philip Schuyler.

Samuel Schuyler worked as a laborer along the city’s riverfront before operating his own towboat on the Hudson. Widely respected as a captain on the river, he also invested well in real estate in what is now Albany’s South End, eventually owning much of a two-block parcel between South Pearl Street and the Hudson River. With his sons he established a hay and feed business, Samuel Schuyler & Company at Franklin and Bassett Streets, as well as a coal yard.

Captain Schuyler died in 1842. His sons would continue doing business on the river with the founding of the Schuyler Towboat Company. (Lot 66, Section 59)

A Physician and Inventor

Thomas Elkins, born in 1819, was one of the few black doctors in Albany during the 19th century. According to an 1897 edition of The Druggists’ Circular and Chemists’ Gazette, Elkins received his early apothecary training under one Dr. Wynkoop, “a physician and druggist of the old school,” before studying dentistry and surgery. He operated a pharmacy on 84 North Swan Street and, later, at Broadway and Livingston Avenue.

During the years prior to the Civil War, Elkins — who lived at 186 Lumber Street Avenue (now Livingston Avenue) — was active with the Underground Railroad in Albany as member of its Vigilance Committee. At the time, the home of Stephen and Harriet Myers, just a half dozen houses away at 198 Lumber Street, was a center for Underground Railroad and abolitionist activity in Albany.

According to the Bicentennial History of Albany, Dr. Elkins served as a medical examiner attached to the 54th Massachusetts regiment during the Civil War. He also traveled to Liberia, bringing home a collection of minerals, shells, and other artifacts. The location of those relics is now, unfortunately, unknown.

 

An inventor as well as a doctor, Elkins patented a special refrigerator for the cold storage of corpses, as well as a large piece of furniture which combined a toilet or commode with a washstand, bureau, mirror, chair, bookshelf, and table. In a similar vein, he also patented a combined quilting frame, ironing table, and dining table. Elkins received a “certificate of highest merit” from the New York Agricultural Society for the refrigerator and a “certificate of merit” for the combination table. He was also one of only two African-Americans to be pictured in Albany’s Centennial Historic Album and served as vice-president of the Albany Literary Association.

Dr. Thomas Elkins died in 1900 and his funeral, presided over by the canon of the Cathedral of All Saints, was attended by a large number of prominent local citizens. (Lot 97, Section 100)

Lost At Sea

In a lot just a few feet from the grave of Dr. Elkins, a tall, simple marble shaft plot bears the name Jacob F. Benjamin, the phrase “LOST AT SEA,” and a date — December 25, 1853. It was on that Christmas when the San Francisco, a vessel from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, encountered a terrible gale and foundered near Charleston. The ship had left New York and was bound for Panama. Aboard were both soldiers (the ship was transporting the Third Regiment of the United States Artillery) and civilian passengers, including women and children. The decks were swept with wind and water, the smokestacks toppled, the boats lost. Reports of the total casualties varied, but some contemporary newspapers reported about 300 casualties and 150 saved.

Among those reported dead that night was a man simply identified as “The barber, colored, washed overboard.” It was Jacob F. Benjamin who, that same year, had been listed in the Albany city directory as a barber residing at 111 Knox Street. His body was not recovered, but his name was carved on the marble shaft in a family plot deeded to his wife, Abigail. At the time of his death, they had five children who ranged in age from an infant (his father’s namesake) to 11 years old. Jacob was thirty-five when he was lost to the waves. His daughter, Catherine, would marry the younger Adam Blake. (Lot 94, Section 100)

A Civil War Veteran Honored

A lithograph of the 54th storming Fort Wagner. / via Wikipedia

Among over 900 Civil War soldiers buried at Albany Rural are several men who served in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the unit depicted in the 1989 film Glory. One of them was William A. Francis, whose grave remained unmarked for 112 years.

There are very few details of Francis’ life, though records show he was an Albany waiter, about 30 years old, married, and the father of a two-year old son when he joined the 54th. He would take part in all of the unit’s battles, including the bloody 1863 clash at Fort Wagner in South Carolina. He became the 54th second highest ranking black member, second to Master Sergeant Lewis Douglass (son of abolitionist Frederick Douglass).

William Francis returned to Albany and again took work as a waiter. He died on December 2, 1897. In 2009, thanks to the efforts of local historian Mark Bodnar, funds were raised by Civil War re-enactors to mark Francis’ burial place with a military headstone. (Single Grave, #, Tier 4, Section 111).

Others

Other African-American residents of Albany buried at the Albany Rural Cemetery include Stephen and Harriet Myers, leaders of Albany’s Underground Railroad community (Lot 2, Section 98), Arabella Chapman Miller and family, subjects of a University of Michigan research project, (Lot 448, Section 104), William H. Topp, a tailor active with the Vigilance Committee ,  the Temperance Cause and staunch advocate for women’s suffrage in the mid 1800s (Lot 25, Section 11), and Dick, whose grave marker describes him as a slave of the well-known merchant John F. Pruyn (Lot 14, Section 49).

A Presidential Postscript

In 1853, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, an African-American teacher and church organist, was refused a seat on a lower Manhattan omnibus operated by the Third Avenue Railroad Company. When she refused to get off the horse-drawn streetcar the conductor had her removed by the police. Graham filed suit against the company which owned the streetcar. The jury found in her favor, awarded her damages, and the Third Avenue Railroad Company immediately desegregated its streetcars. Her lead attorney was future President Chester A. Arthur.

Written by Paula Lemire (significant Friend of Albany History) and appeared in Allover Albany.com  in February 2016.

Why Stanford University isn’t in Albany

Leland Stanford was born in Watervliet in 1824 (the area that is now part of Colonie). His father was a tavern keeper on the Schenectady road, who later ran the Elm Grove Hotel in Roessleville.

Leland left home at 17 to study in Clinton and Cazenovia. He apprenticed in law in Albany, was admitted to the bar in 1848 and eventually married Jane Lathrop, the daughter of a prominent local family.

He briefly practiced law and politics in Wisconsin. But his brothers had followed the gold rush to California, and Leland soon joined them. He established a retail store in Sacramento, but stayed active in politics and was elected governor of California in 1861. That same year, he and some other Sacramento businessmen founded the Central Pacific Railroad Company, which proved to be of much greater interest. He served only one term as governor, but remained president of the Central Pacific for many years, becoming one of the richest men in the United States.

The Stanfords had only one child, Leland Junior, and they were grief-stricken when he died suddenly of typhoid at the age of 16 during a family vacation in Europe in 1884. Despite their huge success and influence in California, they wanted their son buried where their families were from. The Troy Press wrote in 1891 that, “at the same time he had in mind a disposition of his millions that should forever celebrate the name of his son and that should be useful to the public.”

 

A university, for instance. The Press reported that Stanford began negotiations with the Albany Rural Cemetery Association to purchase a site for a mausoleum, and at the same time looked to buy 350 acres of land, including his birthplace, just west of Albany in order to build Leland Stanford, Jr. University.

So how did Stanford University end up in Palo Alto instead of Albany?

If the Troy Press is to be believed, it may have been the greed of the cemetery association, whose officers “it is said, knowing Mr. Stanford’s great wealth and his greater grief, seemed to be of the opinion that they could get from him a little more for the mausoleum site than a person of ordinary means would be asked. The sum which it is said they endeavored to extort was $75. . . .” [about $1,700 in today’s money].

Stanford may have been fabulously well-to-do, but apparently he didn’t like being taken advantage of. The Press says that on discovery of this fact, “He shook the dust of Albany from his feet and went back to California, where he immediately entered upon the development of his university project.” He endowed the new university with $20 million. And he put his son’s mausoleum on his own unfinished new estate, which became the home of Stanford University. After Leland died in 1893, Jane led the development of the university.

The family did not entirely break their ties with Albany, however. In 1886, before the university’s cornerstone had been laid, Mrs. Stanford established a building on the site of the old Lathrop mansion in Albany, near the Fort Orange Club, as the Lathrop Memorial Home for Children, intended as part day care (“for children of working mothers”), part orphanage. The building stood until 1933.

Albany would have to wait until 1962 before it finally had a university.

by Carl Johnson 10/1/2010 from Alloveralbany.com
Update: an 1891 letter editor to the Albany Morning Express by Leland himself denying it all has just been found by Paula Lemire. Hmmm.

Margarita Schuyler: An American Lady

Tucked in a corner of the Schuyler plot (Lot 66, Section 29) are a trio of table-style markers carved from brown sandstone. The inscription on one reads:

“Margarita Schuyler, 1701-1782, Wife of Colonel Philip Schuyler
of The Flatts. Known and esteemed in England and America through Mrs. Grant of Lagans “Memoirs of An American Lady.”

The daughter of Albany mayor Johannes Schuyler, Margarita married her cousin, Colonel Phillipus Schuyler. The couple resided at The Flatts, the family farm located to the northeast of the present Rural Cemetery. They had no children and Col. Schuyler died in 1758.

“Aunt” Schuyler, as she was called, remained a resident of The Flatts. Among the many relatives and friends who spent a considerable amount of time with her at The Flatts was her nephew, Philip Schuyler (Major General and father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton).

Anne McVickars Grant, the daughter of a Scottish army officer, spent part of her childhood at the Schuyler Flatts. Returning with her family to Scotland, she published an account of her time at The Flatts in 1808. The memoir provides invaluable firsthand details of life on the Schuyler estates and is a tribute to Margarita whom the author looked back on as “a most valued friend.” The full text can be read here: https://archive.org/details/memoirsanameric03grangoog

At the close of the French and Indian War, it was Madame Schuyler who persuaded local leaders to retrieve children of colonists taken by Native Americans during the conflict. Distraught parents came from as far away as New England and Pennsylvania to seek their missing children. Not all of the children were recovered, but the joy of the mothers who were reunited with their children was described as “overpowering.”

Madame Schuyler died at her Flatts home on August 28, 1782. Her grave in the little family burial ground near the house was not marked until all the graves were relocated from The Flatts to the Rural Cemetery in 1920. At that time, a proper headstone was placed over her remains. It can be found in a corner of the lot behind General Philip Schuyler’s granite column.

Erastus Dow Palmer

Erastus Palmer’s “Angel At The Sepulchre.”

Sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer died on March 9, 1904.

Palmer’s name is quite closely linked with the Albany Rural Cemetery. He created a number of notable monuments, including “Remembrance” for the grave of Lucretia M. Olcott (wife of the Cemetery’s first treasurer, Thomas Olcott), several marble portraits, and one of the Cemetery’s most famous statues, the heroic “Angel At The Sepulchre.” Palmer also served as a trustee of the Cemetery.

He is buried in Lot 15, Section 34. His monument, a Roman-inspired sarcophagus, was designed by Marcus T. Reynolds. It is decorated with palm fronds as a play on the sculptor’s name.

More on Palmer can be read here: http://albanynyhistory.blogspot.com/…/erastus-dow-palmer.ht…

Grave of Erastus Dow Palmer

“Grief” by Erastus Dow Palmer on the reverse of the Daniel Campbell monument.

Marble portrait of Lewis Benedict

Portrait of Thomas Olcott

Grave of Lucia M. Olcott with statue and relief by Erastus Dow Palmer. Statue is called “Remembrance.”

A family cemetery at South Pearl and Hamilton Street

Throwback to when there was a large graveyard on what is now the southeast corner of South Pearl and Hamilton Street (now the site of the South Mall Towers apartment building).

It was established by Hendrick Hallenbeck (also spelled Hallenbeek and Hallenbake) in a will written in 1766. He set aside a portion of his land to be used as a family burying ground and maintained by his heirs. When he dies two years later, he was laid to rest there. It would not be his final rest, though. Over the years, as descendants moved away, streets were widens, and new buildings (including a bell foundry) surrounded the little cemetery, its upkeep became a burden to the remaining family members. By the mid-1800s, there were few new burials of family, but some of the space was used to bury victims of the 1832 cholera epidemic. In 1860, the corner lot was sold for taxes and a part of the proceeds used to relocate the Hallenbeck burial ground.

A large plot was purchased on the North Ridge at Albany Rural Cemetery. The graves from the corner of South Pearl and Hamilton were relocated there, a process that attracted so many onlookers that the police had to block their view of the exhumations and hold back the curious. A large marble monument with the names of Hendrick and his immediate family was erected in Section 73. The plot is just behind the Soldiers Lot on the edge of Glen Wood Hill. A small gate allowed visitors to access the plot from Dell Side Avenue overlooking the Kromme Kill.

From Paula Lemire’s Albany Rural Cemetery-Beyond the Graves on Facebook.

Aaron Burr Slept Here

There is a family plot at the Albany Rural Cemetery perched somewhat precariously on the Middle Ridge hill just above the Ozia Hall monument and not too far from the Samuel Schuyler lot. From the path below, it appears to be just a row of granite urns facing a tall, but otherwise unassuming marble shaft. From the hill above, though, a set of old flat gravestones can be seen laid between the granite urns and the marble shaft. The shaft reads simply “The Family of The Souldens.” One of the headstones has a very simply carved hand with its index finger pointing toward heaven. Another stone is a very pleasant discovery; a plump, winged cherub’s head framed by a lozenge and flanked by daisy finials.

Lot 22, Section 61 was deeded to an Englishman named William Soulden who was interred there in 1851, just seven years after the Cemetery opened. Several of the gravestones in the lot predate the Cemetery and were likely moved here from the State Street Burying Grounds by Soulden.
Those interred in this lot include:
Sarah A. Smith, died September 7, 1825, age 88
Catherine Eliza Soulden, died February 24, 1831, age 9
William M. Soulden, died October 23, 1835, age 19
Catherine Townsend, died May 18, 1849, age 70
Ann M. Soulden, died August 9, 1849, age 32
Louisa B. Muir, died August 13, 1849, aged 32
William Soulden, died August 21, 1851, age 64
Ann M. Soulden, died November 16, 1860, age 80
The burial cards on file unfortunately provide no other details, a common occurrence with some of the older records or relocated graves.

The family had a connection to one of Albany’s oldest and well-known buildings, a brickmansion built on Washington Street for Samuel Hill (who is buried in the Rural Cemetery’s Church Grounds section) and attributed to architect Philip Hooker (also buried in the Church Grounds). Documentation for the National Register of Historic Places gives some details:

“In 1820, the property was acquired by Sarah Smith, a widow, and her niece, Catherine Townsend and the Albany City Directories list Mrs. Sarah Smith as living in Hill’s Mansion House on Washington Street. In 1821, William Soulden is also listed as an occupant. The Townsend-Soulden family operated the large property as a boarding house, with Aaron Burr having been among their guests in 1824. When Sarah Smith died in 1825, she bequeathed the house to Catherine Townsend and William Soulden, in trust for another neice, Ann Maria, the wife of Soulden. William and Ann Soulden owned the property until 1827.”

As noted, Aaron Burr a resident at the Soulden House (also refered to as the Selden House) while looking after some legal matters two decades after shooting Alexander Hamilton in the infamous duel. Earlier in his career, Burr had a law office in Albany.

The old Soulden House still stands on Washington Avenue and is quite familiar to many as the Fort Orange Club.

By Paula Lemire from Albany Rural Cemetery – Beyond the Graves

The Celtic Cross influence in Albany Rural Cemetery

In the mid- 1850’s there was a revival of interest in Celtic art that started in Dublin. The impetus for the movement, which came to be known as the Irish Renaissance, was Irish nationalism. But the beauty of the traditional Irish forms worked their way into the Arts and Craft movement spearheaded by William Morris in England in the late 1800s

In the U.S the aesthetics of the Irish Revival heavily influenced our most influential designers of the late 19th and early 20 century. Louis Comfort Tiffany used the Celtic cross motif in his his stained glass windows , his Tiffany jewelry and, yes, in Tiffany designed grave markers. Gustav Stickley, this country’s leading practitioner of the Arts and Crafts movement, adopted traditional Irish design elements like the cross and the knot in his designs for all things useful and beautiful – furniture, fabric, lamps.