USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 32
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1 The Cemetery Committee reported the "removal of bodies from graveyard and from DePeyster vault to the number of about 100."
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and the southern half of the nave of the church. St. Michael's Church is, we believe, the only church in this city, perhaps in this country, in which the graves of the dead of former generations lie beneath the feet of the worshippers of to-day. The tombstones of these graves were reverently removed and placed in the crypt beneath the Chapel of the Angels on the line of old Bloomingdale Road. This crypt serves also as a mortuary chapel, where the remains of the dead of the present congregation may be deposited between death and burial.
In examining the stones of earlier date in this crypt one is impressed by the relatively large proportion of persons born in England, Ireland, and Scotland, a reminder of the fact that the church of those days still stood very close to the colonial period. Among the more interesting of these tombstones is that of Thomas M. Finlay, A.M., born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1756, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and one time Professor of Greek and Latin in the college of his native town. Emigrating to this country he taught school with much success first in Newark, and then at Manhattanville. In his school-house at the latter place St. Mary's Church was founded. A grateful pupil furnished a Latin epitaph for his tombstone, and his widow kept the grass fresh and the flowers blooming there until 1872, when she herself died at the age of 101.
The gravestone of a lad of sixteen, now in the crypt, used to be shown to the children of St. Michael's of earlier generations as a warning against Sabbath break- ing. This lad, Hiram Black, did not, like Hogarth's ap- prentice, play dice on the tombstones while his honest comrades worshipped in the church. But he did, it appears, take advantage of the fact that all decent
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Old Tombstones
and godly folk were in church, to climb a neighbor's cherry tree and gorge himself with cherries. I suppose that in the haste of eating stolen fruit, keeping an eye out at the same time against the return of the church goers, the poor lad swallowed unwittingly and unwil- lingly a few cherry stones, which found their way into that needless and then unknown organ, the appendix vermiformis. At all events he died as a result of eating stolen cherries on the Sabbath, and many a parent used to take his children to that gravestone and tell the story of Hiram Black that his sad fate might prove their warning.
One epitaph on the tombstone of Obed Thayer, who died in 1816, is worth quoting as a specimen of the obituary taste of that period:
My tender wife I leave to mourn and weep, While I within the silent tomb do sleep; Prepare for death in time, for you must die, And also be entom'd as well as I.
How lonely is his widow's fate, Since she has lost her tender mate;
Thy virtues, Thayer, although they're nameless here, Shall long be told by Elizabeth's silent tear.
The churchyard about the church providing only for the members of the church itself, it became neces- sary after the disuse of the Clendining Lane burying ground to provide some other place for the burial of the poor of the parish and neighborhood.
In 1847, Rev. T. M. Peters, assistant at St. Michael's Church, commenced his mission in what is now Central Park,
then a wilderness of rock and swamp from the larger portion
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of which the trees and brush, which once in part con- cealed its barrenness, had been cleared away by the poor settlers for use as firewood. From East to West three roads crossed this tract and from these roads winding footways and narrow cart paths led to the habitations of poor and wretched people of every race and color and nationality, who had there taken refuge. In this waste there was but a single village, known as Seneca, occupied by many families of colored people with whom consorted and in many cases amalgamated, debased and outcast whites. Many of the inhabitants of this village had no regular occupation, finding it easy to replenish their stock of fuel with driftwood from the river and supply their tables from the same source, with fish. Poverty abounds in chil- dren and the colored village of which we speak formed no exception to the prevailing rule. . With no ref- erence to the future or other thought beyond that of pro- viding for the spiritual destitution, an unfinished room in the centre of the settlement was hired and rudely furnished with plank seats. The small room was soon crowded with forty colored children, the number being limited by the narrowness of the apartment. As a neces- sary accompaniment of the work there begun, the families were visited, advised, and, when necessary, assisted. Like all thriftless mortals, in the day of health they had only enough. Sickness almost invariably brought great desti- tution. Death, with its many attendant expenses, obliged these poor people either to give up the bodies of their near- est and dearest relations for burial in "Potter's Field," or incur a debt which only months of saving could extinguish. The greatest pressure of distress was felt, therefore, in cases of death, and the charity most needed there was some effort to reduce or meet the high charges for funerals and burials. After the lapse of two years, an unexpected gift of a piece of ground was made to this Mission by four sisters, of whom, up to that time, the Missionary had never heard; a convenient building for the Sunday school and public
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Churchyard in Central Park
worship was soon erected, and the remainder of the ground allotted to the burial of the poor dead.
Immediately thereafter followed the cholera of 1849, and many a body received a Christian burial owing to this unlooked for gift of ground. The great relief which the opportunity of free burial afforded to these poor people had been scarcely realized, when an act was passed at Albany closing this and other burial places in New York City lying below Eighty-sixth Street.1
How Dr. Peters provided a burial place not only for these poor people but for all the poor people of the city is recorded in a paper which he prepared in 1874 at the request of the City Mission Society for Church and State, from which we quote the following:
In the early part of the year 1852, interments having been prohibited by the legislature in the ground used for three years previous, I desired to procure, in Astoria, a small piece of land, as a place of burial for the poor ministered to in connection with All Angels' Church, built by me a few years earlier, in what is now the Central Park. The kindly proffered services of a friend2 accustomed to seek exercise and recreation on horseback, were accepted for the purpose of looking up such a lot. After a long search he reported failure to find anything desirable at the price named, which was from two to four hundred dollars, but that a field containing seven acres, lying within two miles of the Astoria Ferry, was offered for sale at twenty-one hundred dollars, eleven hundred in cash, the remainder to rest as a mortgage on the property. The sum required to be paid down exceeded all my worldly possessions, and the project then suggested itself of interesting other parties in secur- ing the land as a place of burial for all the Free Churches in our communion in the City of New York. An attempt
1 Gradual Growth of Charities.
2 Thomas A. Richmond, then a vestryman of St. Michael's.
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was accordingly made to obtain money by subscription. Little interest was manifested in the enterprise. Beyond a donation of twenty-five dollars from the late Robert B. Minturn, a like sum from the late James Punnett, and fifty cents given by a colored woman named Venus Costello, nothing could be collected. Hence this method was necessarily abandoned. The money donation was after- wards applied towards paying for St. Luke's Hospital lot. Recourse was next had immediately to the persons to be benefited, and the sum of eighty-one dollars was con- tributed by forty-one persons, who received certificates to be used in payment of graves and small family lots. Thirty-seven of these subscribers were colored; four were white people living in the immediate vicinity of the upper reservoir. The names of the forty-one are written in a book, as are indeed the names of every person aiding in the pur- chase either by gift or loan. Dr. Muhlenberg for the Church of the Holy Communion, and Dr. Bedell, now Bishop of Ohio, for Ascension Church, contributed each one hun- dred and ten dollars, receiving the promise of a burial plot for each of their respective Churches when the transaction should be completed. The whole amount thus far accumu- lated, was but three hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty cents, and further progress towards raising the necessary funds seemed well nigh hopeless. As a last resort my plans were laid before a few friends, and loans, to me personally, asked for the object. There were thus secured two loans of three hundred dollars each, one of one hundred and sixty, one of one hundred and fifty, one of one hundred and twenty-three, and one of one hundred and sixteen dollars, all of which were in due time paid.
The amount in hand had been thus increased to fifteen hundred dollars, the property was bought, in my nome, the payment of eleven hundred dollars made, and a fence with covered gateway erected upon the road in front. The expense of mapping and laying out the ground and building a temporary lodge for the keeper had next to be met. This
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Begging and Borrowing
was done with funds solicited upon condition of assigning a plot of about eighty-six hundred feet to St. Luke's Hos- pital for the burial of deceased patients. The sum of two hundred and eighty-four dollars and twenty-three cents was thus gathered, to which I added two hundred and sixty- five dollars and twenty-five cents; all the money, if my memory serves me aright, of which I was then possessed. With this five hundred forty-nine and one-half dollars the work of putting the ground in proper order was prose- cuted until the purse was again emptied. The receipts for burials began to yield enough for current expenses and to leave a surplus, which was applied to the erection of an enclosing fence and to other improvements. Deeming it unsafe that land set apart for a cemetery should stand in the name of an individual, and also that it was undesir- able to have a mortgage on graves; I proposed to the Vestry of St. Michael's Church, of which I was Assistant Minister, as well as Rector of All Angels' Church, to receive a con- veyance of the land and to advance the remaining one thousand dollars. This was done, with the proviso that the interest, and the expectation that the principal of the money thus applied, should be repaid out of the income of the ground; to which alone I was to look, during the ensuing ten years, for reimbursement of any expenditures made upon it by me.
Although it was early demonstrated that the receipts of the ground would suffice for current expenses and inter- est, there was yet much to be done in the way of improve- ment, for which other funds must be obtained. It was my wish to complete the first intention of making this a neat and proper burial place, in a portion of which free graves might always be given to the poor of our Free Churches and inmates of public and private institutions. So soon, therefore, as I became a holder of any private property, whatever amount seemed necessary for the betterment of the cemetery was so applied. To secure beyond question the free burial place desired, I gave in 1855 the sum of five
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hundred and sixty dollars, stipulating that a certain plot known as "C," should be forever appropriated to the burial of members of Free Churches and the inmates of charitable institutions, the only charge to be that of digging the grave. Twelve hundred and ninety-four free interments, chiefly for the City Mission Society, have been made in the piece of ground thus set aside.
From that date, 1855, I had no hesitation in expending upon the Cemetery whatever was requisite to adorn it with trees, supply proper fences, erect a lodge, and otherwise improve it. By the purchase of an adjoining field the size of the Churchyard was nearly doubled, and when in 1865 St. Michael's Vestry assumed and gave its bond for the whole indebtedness, the amount advanced by me above all gifts and receipts had reached, with interest, to within a trifle of eight thousand dollars. Since that time the Vestry has paid, out of the return of the ground, the amount for which it thus became responsible, as well as the larger portion of about five thousand dollars, expended by it upon the lodge, iron fences, gateway, and roads. Besides the financial difficulties, legal impediments and sanitary regu- lations were from time to time thrown in our way, every one of which, without the aid of other parties, was triumphantly overcome and final success achieved. The part of the Churchyard yet unused will suffice for the wants of the Church for long years to come, and allow free burial to many hundreds of those in whose interest this cemetery was first purchased. Besides the free interments already enumerated, nine hundred and eighty-four free graves have been given by St. Luke's Hospital, the Churches of the Holy Communion, the Holy Apostles, Trinity, and other churches, and also by The Sheltering Arms and various charitable or other incorporations, making a total of twenty-two hundred and five bodies which have been buried at a very moderate cost, easily borne by their friends in humble life.
When it is considered that each deceased person leaves
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Transferred to St. Michael's
a home bereaved, and that each member of that household, however poor, desires to give the dead an orderly burial, it will at once be seen that forty-six hundred such burials means five times forty-six hundred mourners in some degree comforted. There are persons who esteem the burial of the dead an unnecessary charity, inasmuch as the Potter's Field is open to all. Let such go with our visitors to the homes of the poor, to the bedside of the sick in the hospitals, and they will learn that next to the dread of the pains of hell is horror at the thought that the church might have no grave for them. The death bed is made less painful, when they are assured that our ministrations will not cease, until they have received at our hands the last gift of earth. Plentiful tears and expressions of gratitude, from daughters and sons, from fathers, and above all from mothers, who in the day of bereavement and poverty know not whither to go or look, almost daily witness to the grateful and opportune relief which this cemetery affords. Unlike almost all other institutions, it has no competitor or imitator. Our church, I believe, stands alone among all Christian bodies in this city in having a ground in which the pastors of her thirty free congregations, or the missionaries to hospital and asylum can receive, without purchase, a resting place for their dead.
Reference is made in this account to a transaction with Dr. Peters by which the Cemetery in Astoria was transferred to St. Michael's Church. The transaction is recorded in the following documents and resolutions in the Register of St. Michael's Church :
To the Vestry of St. Michael's Church.
GENTLEMEN :
Having purchased 7 acres of land at Astoria on the Flushing Turnpike after consultation with a majority of the members of the Vestry for a Cemetery to be called St. Michael's Churchyard for the sum of $2100, and being
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Annals of St. Michael's
desirous of conveying the same to the Vestry, clear of a mortgage of $1000, remaining due thereon, I have con- sidered that it would be advantageous to have the mort- gage paid off & cancelled, and purpose that the Vestry should pay the mortgage, and for security receive a Deed for the Church at Yorkville called the Church of All Angels & four lots of land adjoining, now indebted to me $1000, which Church will be conveyed clear and unincumbered.
It is however to be understood that I am to be reim- bursed the sum of $2100 thus advanced by me for the pur- chase of the Cemetery, out of the sales of Burial Plots in the same, and also such sums as I may pay for the charge and improvement of the ground and the erection of a Chapel thereon, if the same shall be deemed advisable.
Respectfully, (Signed) THOMAS MCC. PETERS.
New York, March 14, 1853.
Report To the Vestry of St. Michael's Church.
The Committee to whom was referred the annexed letter from the Rev. T. McC. Peters Respectfully Report That they have examined into the subject matter of the said let- ter, and submit the following views thereon:
Mr. Peters after verbal consultation and advice of a num- ber of the Vestry, during the absence of the Rector, pur- chased for $2100 a lot of 7 acres of land at Newtown near Astoria, for a Cemetery to be called "St. Michael's Church- yard," paying $1100 in cash, and giving a mortgage of $1000, the balance of the consideration.
Some years ago he erected a Church at Yorkville near 8th Avenue called the Church of All Angels, by means of contributions collected by him, and funds advanced by himself upon four lots, the title of which is under his control; which Church he considers now indebted to him at least $1000.
Both of these properties have greatly increased in value, since the title vested in Mr. Peters, but he is not desirous
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Debt on Cemetery
of realizing any profit, as he considers himself acting as a Trustee in both cases for the best interests of the Church.
Mr. Peters proposes now, that the Vestry of St. Michael's Church shall pay off and cancel the mortgage of $1000 on the Cemetery at New Town on receiving a deed from him for the same. Reserving the right to manage the same for Io years, or until he can reimburse himself within that time, the whole sum of $2100 advanced, out of the sales of burial plots, and also such sums as he may pay for the improvement thereof.
Mr. Peters also proposes to pay to the Treasurer of St. Michael's Church semi-annually, the yearly sum of $70 out of the monies received for sales of Burial Plots, being his interest on the said $1000 advanced, until said Church shall be reimbursed the said sum from the sale of the York- ville property, or from the sale of Burial Plots in the Cemetery.
He also proposes to have conveyed by deed to the Vestry of St. Michael's the Church of All Angels, and the said 4 lots at Yorkville to secure the said sum of $1000 clear and unencumbered.
The ultimate result of these arrangements as we Report, will be that the Vestry of St. Michael's Church will own a Cemetery of 7 acres of land at New Town, and also 4 lots of land at Yorkville, with the Church of All Angels erected thereon, upon advancing only the sum of $1000, as Mr. Peters looks to the sale of Burial Plots alone to reimburse him or his heirs, the $2100 advanced by him, & the monies paid out by him in regulating & managing the Cemetery, he retaining the management for 10 years, unless sooner paid.
Your Committee therefore submits the following Resolu- tion for adoption by the Vestry viz. :
Resolved That the Treasurer be authorized & directed to pay the sum of $1000 due on mortgage on "St. Michael's Churchyard " at Newtown & cancel the same, upon receiv- ing from Mr. Peters a conveyance for the same, reserving
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to himself the right of managing the same until such time, not exceeding 10 years from the date thereof, as he shall be reimbursed the monies expended by him, for the purchase and improvement of said premises, with the interest thereof, & Mr. Peters agreeing to pay St. Michael's Church $70 a year, semi-annually, while his right of managing said Cemetery continues. Mr. Peters next by himself or his heirs to receive the sum of $2100, and also such sums as he may expend for the charge & improvement of said ground, out of the proceeds of the sales of burial plots therein.
Said Treasurer also to receive a Conveyance of the Church of All Angels and four lots at Yorkville as above, clear & unencumbered.
April 30th, 1853.
R. L. SCHIEFFELIN,
(Signed.) A. V. WILLIAMS JAS. F. DEPEYSTER.
Committee.
By 1864 the indebtedness of the Cemetery to Dr. Peters had increased to $8000, as is shown by the report of the Committee on the sale of the Clendining Lane land. The cost of surveying and mapping out lands, opening roads, erecting gateways and keeper's lodge, building 2500 feet of high picket fence, planting out many trees and shrubs and other improvements and the purchase of six more acres of land, increasing the original seven acres to thirteen acres, had caused this additional indebtedness. It was the opinion of the committee that $6300 might be paid by the sale of a portion of the school-house lot and it was their ex- pectation that in time the receipts from the Cemetery would discharge the entire debt "and also add to the present income of the Vestry, a sum sufficient to pay the annual interest upon the funded debt of the Church." In point of fact the Clendining Lane land was not sold
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Receipts of Cemetery
for this purpose at that time. In 1870, however, the church sold to the village of Astoria for $3600 two acres of its land for a village cemetery.
There is no report of the actual administration, interments, receipts, etc., of the Cemetery entered on the Vestry minutes until 1866. In that year the re- ceipts were $707.25 and the expenses were $411.81, leaving a balance of $305.44, out of which $176.80 were expended in the erection of a receiving vault, so that only $128.64 were actually paid to the Treasury. The total number of interments in that year was 283, but the report states that "the receipts of the Cemetery have been much diminished by the stoppage of the Astoria boats for five months out of twelve." From that time on the rector presents a report of the Cemetery to the Vestry each year. Evidently the latter is concerned in the financial side of those reports, for in 1867 it "was resolved that free burials in the Church Cemetery at Newtown, Long Island, be discontinued after the end of the present year except from St. Michael's Parish."
When the Cemetery in Astoria was started Dr. Peters placed in charge of it Christian Scheurer, one of the German refugees of 1848, to whom he had before that given a home in Manhattanville, to cultivate the land held by him for St. Mary's Church, and Christian Scheurer, his widow, and his son Edward after him, continued in charge of the Cemetery until 1895. Up to about 1875 the rector seems to have had no assis- tance from the Vestry as a body in the administration of the Cemetery, although Dr. Brown personally gave
him much help. After Mr. W. R. Peters became treasurer of the church and Mr. E. L. Tiemann1 clerk
1 After he left the Vestry in 1895, and up to the time of his death, May 10, 1896, Mr. Tiemann continued to serve on the Cemetery
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of the Vestry, however, they, with the rector of the parish, were appointed a Committee on the Cemetery, and from that time onward occur notices (1883, '86, '88, '89) of enlargements and improvements of the Cemetery, laying out of roads, grading of ground, adoption of new methods of cemetery administration, the erection of a new lodge or rather rebuilding of an old farmhouse to serve as a lodge, etc. The following minute from the records of the Vestry meeting of February 6, 1885, gives some idea of the development of the Cemetery up to that date and the method which it was proposed to pursue in the future:
Mr. W. R. Peters stated that the object of the meeting was to consider a proposition to extend the Cemetery by the acquisition of more ground, and gave a short history of the Cemetery from the time it was started by Dr. Peters in 1852, when a few acres were purchased by him at his own risk, with the particular object of providing a burial ground for poor people at small expense, and which should be wholly under control of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It was carried along by him until 1865, up to which time the amount expended in excess of receipts was about $8000. A bond for this amount was executed by the Vestry of this Church, who thereby acquired the title and control of the property.
The indebtedness had all been covered by 1875, and from that date until 1883 there had been paid into the Church Treasury the net sum of about $21700.
Committee, and to his zeal and diligence the church is largely indebted for the development and improvement of that property. Of his work the Committee says in its report to the Vestry, Octo- ber 12, 1896:
"By his sudden taking away we have lost a valuable friend and co-worker, and the Cemetery has been deprived of the guiding hand which almost unaided has directed it for the past ten or fifteen years."
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