Cornell Cemetery, Little Neck

Tombstone of Samuel Cornell (d. 1841). Photo taken April 1927. (QBPL)

Here lies a youth in prime of life
By death was snatched away.
His soul is blest and gone to rest,
Though flesh is gone to clay.
He is gone forever his life’s sun is set.
But its golden beams linger to comfort us yet.
He has gone in the fulness of beauty and youth,
An emblem of virtue, a witness for truth.
 
Strangers, remember, you must die.

This poignant epitaph, concluding with a bleak reminder to the living, is from the gravestone of Samuel Cornell, who died in 1841 at the age of 20.  His was one of four markers that were found by the Queens Topographical Bureau in 1923 in a plot located at today’s Little Neck Parkway and Nassau Blvd.  Along with Samuel Cornell’s monument, the 67’ x 74’ graveyard had tombstones for John Cornell (d. 1847), Atletter Ann Herrick (d. 1849) and Emeline Penny (d. 1850).  The site was a known burying ground of the Cornell family, who were among the earliest English settlers in Little Neck. The small cemetery, with the four markers still present, was discovered again in 1952 when a shopping center was built at the site.  The remains from the graveyard were likely moved to the cemetery at Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, where other members of the Cornell family are buried.

The Cornell Cemetery near Little Neck Road (today’s Little Neck Parkway), as surveyed in 1923 by Queens Topographical Bureau.

Approximate location of the Cornell Cemetery on the estate of John Cornell, 1913 (Hyde 1913)

View of the Cornell Cemetery in 1952. (NY Herald Tribune)

Present day view of the former Cornell Cemetery site, now the location of a shopping center (NYCityMap)

Sources:  Hyde’s 1913 Atlas of the Borough of Queens 3:Pl 20; Description of Private and Family Cemeteries in the Borough of Queens, 64-65; “Queens Builder Finds 100-Year-Old Tombstones on Lot—He’ll Spare Them,” New York Herald Tribune, Dec 29, 1952, 3; NYCityMap.

The Marble Cemeteries

The New York Marble Cemetery and New York City Marble Cemetery are the city’s two oldest non-sectarian cemeteries. Perpetually confused with one another since they were created in the early 1830s, these private cemeteries were formed by businessmen seeking to provide alternatives to churchyard and public graveyard interments after burials were prohibited in lower Manhattan by city ordinances in the 1820s. Featuring underground vaults that are the size of small rooms and made of Tuckahoe marble, the two Marble cemeteries were built in the area of Second Avenue between Second and Third streets in the East Village, a neighborhood that developers hoped would soon become a fashionable residential locale.

The two cemeteries were initially popular and members of a number of distinguished families were entombed there; however, by the 1870s rural cemeteries in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx were preferred and the Marble cemeteries primarily were used as storage vaults for bodies awaiting burial at these places. Sporadic entombments continued in the Marble cemeteries until the 1930s; both were designated NYC Landmarks in 1969 and now are open to the public on special occasions.

Location of the Marble cemeteries in 1852. The half-acre NY Marble Cemetery was incorporated in 1830; the slightly larger NYC Marble Cemetery was built one block away in 1832 (Dripps 1952)

Aerial view of the Marble cemeteries in 2012 (NYCityMap)

New York Marble Cemetery

View of the New York Marble Cemetery in 1893. Most of the 2,060 interments in the cemetery took place between 1830 and 1870; the last was in 1937 (King 1893)

View of the New York Marble Cemetery, 2008 (Mary French)

The entrance to the New York Marble Cemetery, in a narrow alley at what was once known as 411⁄2 Second Avenue (Mary French)

All burials in the New York Marble Cemetery are in 156 below-ground vaults made of solid white Tuckahoe marble. The names of the original owners are on plaques on the surrounding walls (Mary French)

View more photos of the New York Marble Cemetery.

New York City Marble Cemetery

View of the New York City Marble Cemetery in 1893. Unlike its predecessor, it permitted family monuments and individual markers to identify the underground vaults (King 1893)

View of the New York City Marble Cemetery entrance on Second Street, 2008 (Mary French)

Vault marker in New York City Marble Cemetery. The site contains 258 vaults (Mary French)

View of a vault door looking down from ground level (New York City Marble Cemetery).

View more photos of the New York City Marble Cemetery.

Sources: The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (D.C. Sloan 1991), 40-42; King’s 1893 Handbook of New York City, 506, 511; Dripps’ 1852 Map of the City of New-York extending northward to Fiftieth St; NYCityMap; New York Marble Cemetery; New York City Marble Cemetery.

St. Raymond’s Churchyard

The small yard in front of the Church of St. Raymond, with its handful of gravestones, is a vestige of a much larger burial ground that was the first Catholic cemetery in the Bronx.  Located at the corner of Castle Hill Avenue and East Tremont Avenue, the parish was founded in 1842 when an acre of land was obtained by Reverend John Hughes to create a Catholic church and cemetery in what was then the village of Westchester.  In 1847 the cemetery was enlarged by the purchase of another acre and this site was in constant use as the parish burial ground until a new, larger St. Raymond’s Cemetery was established about two miles southeast of the church, in 1875.  Most of the graves from the churchyard, which extended along the west side of the church as well as to the rear, likely were transferred to St. Raymond’s Cemetery as the parish complex grew throughout the first half of the 20^th century.

Location of St. Raymond’s Catholic parish complex at East Tremont Ave and Castle Hill Ave in the Bronx (NYCityMap)

St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1868 (Beers 1868)

A view of St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1905 (NYPL)

St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1913 (Bromley 1913)

View of gravestones in St. Raymond’s churchyard, October 2010 (Mary French)

View more photos of St. Raymond’s Churchyard.

Sources:  History of Westchester County. . . (J. Scharf 1886), 814; “The Catholic Cemeteries of New York,” Historical Records and Studies 1, 377; St. Raymond’s Cemetery; NYCityMap; Beers’ 1868 Atlas of New York and Vicinity, Pl. 16; Bromley’s 1913 Atlas of the City of New York, Borough of the Bronx, Vol 3, Pl 26.