
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.




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.