Public Burial Ground, Brooklyn

An 1857 newspaper clipping reports the discovery of human remains at the site of Brooklyn’s early- 19th-century public burial ground

In the years 1811-1812, there was a German physician known as the “Rain-Water Doctor” who practiced in the village of Brooklyn before moving on to Providence, Rhode Island. He was quite famous, and during his time in Brooklyn thousands of people from Manhattan and Long Island came to seek his remedies. The medicines he prescribed were mostly herbs and other natural substances, including rainwater, which he encouraged all of his patients to drink. Among the many who came to Brooklyn to consult the Rain-Water Doctor was Apollos Nicholls of Smithtown, Long Island, who died soon after placing himself under the doctor’s care. The circumstances of Nicholls’ case deeply affected the physician, who erected over his deceased patient’s grave a handsome marble tombstone with the following, unusually long, inscription: 

In the mournful instances of human frailty, concording to demonstrate the destiny; also, as a baneful occurrence of both, and of an unshaken resolution and usual disappointment, here lies the no more animated and wasting remains of APOLOS NICOLL, born in Smithtown Ap. 11, 1776 : 14^th of the same month 1811, departed and delivered up to the elementary menstrum of dissolution, nought, Resurrection, and Ascension; Conspicuous example of an unavoidable fate, who after his having been tired of experiencing eight months of various diseases, in expection to find alleviation to his painful existence, started in quest of relief, and firm in his resolution notwithstanding an inconsiderable distance contended three weeks in battling against the progressive obstacles of his perilous situation, opposing his design, to reach a dwelling which his delusive confidence had flattered himself to find alleviance, the end of his distress and complicated misery, but unfortunately found the one of his days accelerated by his bold attempt, and both his stranguary dropsical state and the strenuous motion of the last vehicle which conveyed him to the one by whom he eagerly expected to be alleviated and receive his existence prolongation : but vain hope! soon aborted! subject likewise to asthmatical affection by a sudden violent paroxism, effect of the combusted system stimulating the accumulated mass out of its recess, and which completed by obstructing the airy passage speedily produced suffocation, and that fatally; this incident terminated the earthly career, in putting a period to the suffering venturing afflicated; sorrowful consequence which inseparably has condemned the one he so considerately instrusted with his corporeal repair, to become of his disaster passive spectator, instead of a desirous benefactor : predetermined in the witness, which intitially and peremptorily was to sustain the view of such sinister catastrophe the inexorable po..t..ces manifested to only have afforded to their destined victim enough of vital faculty, for reaching the spot whereupon the minutes residue of the last hour was to be exhausted, and for implacably having after the fatal final thread cut off; To memorize such a dismal event, the concern it has caused to the unaccustomed beholder, may this cold stone relating the particular be of  consolatory nature, for the surviving consort and relatives of the deceased, and help them to be in their privation resigned to the unalterable Supreme Will, and with fortitutde submit to the execution of its irrevocable decree.

Apollos Nicholls’ grave was in the old public burial ground of Brooklyn, where his tombstone was still standing in 1839 when the above inscription was copied and published by the Long Island Star. This public burial ground, or potter’s field, was located on the northwest corner of Livingston Street and Boerum Place in what is now downtown Brooklyn. When exactly this cemetery was established is not known; it was likely used from the early 1800s until about 1827 when the City of Brooklyn created a new public burial ground at Wallabout Bay.

An 1849 map of Brooklyn shows the Military Garden situated at the junction of Fulton and Joralemon streets; the public burial ground was adjacent to the Military Garden, at the corner of Boerum Place and Livingston Street

The public burial ground at Livingston Street and Boerum Place was a place of interment for the poor, the unknown, and, like Apollos Nicholl, those who died while away from home. Sailors and marines from the Brooklyn Navy Yard were buried here before a naval cemetery was established adjacent to the Yard in the early 1830s. In an 1852 letter to the Daily Eagle, a Brooklynite recalled seeing military burials at the cemetery on Livingston Street and Boerum Place during his schoolboy days. “During the war of 1812,” he writes, “when a large body of Militia was collected in and about Brooklyn, taken from the comforts and endearments of home and suddenly subjected to all the hardships of the camp, sickness prevailed among them, and many died and were here buried. I have often followed the funerals of the soldiers to this burial place.”

The public burial ground was located next to Du Flon’s Military Garden, a pleasure ground that was situated at the junction of Fulton and Joralemon streets from 1810 to 1861. Punch Du Flon describes the Military Garden, and the cemetery that abutted it, in an 1891 letter published in the Daily Eagle. “My father, as you know, was the proprietor of the Military Garden, and it was really the only place of amusement in town in those days. . .We had concerts there and a little theater. At that time there was a burying ground at the corner of Boerum Place and Livingston Street, and that little cemetery bordered my father’s property. It didn’t bother us at all to have a cemetery so close at hand, but there was on one side of the fence a good deal that was grim and on the other a good deal that was merry.” 

What happened to Brooklyn’s old public burial ground is unclear. Evidently, the City of Brooklyn sold the property in the 1850s, but no record has been found indicating that authorities arranged for the removal of remains from the site before it was redeveloped. When workmen excavated the property in 1857, they found human remains and portions of coffins and headstones. These were reportedly carried off with rubbish from the site. Another relic from the cemetery was found in 1861 when workmen redeveloping the Military Garden property found a gravestone with the name “Peter Taylor.” By the late 1860s, a county courthouse stood on the former Military Garden and the public burial ground was covered by stables and a gymnasium. Today office buildings are at the site of Brooklyn’s early-19th-century public burial ground, where a monument with the Rain-Water Doctor’s 400-word epitaph to a lost patient once stood.

The redeveloped Military Garden and public burial ground sites are depicted on this 1867 map

A 2018 aerial view of the former site of the Brooklyn public burial ground at Livingston Street and Boerum Place

Sources: Map of the City of Brooklyn (Colton 1849); Plan of New York City, from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, Sheet 1 (Dripps 1867); A History of the City of Brooklyn including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburgh, Vol 1 (Stiles 1867) & Vol 2 (Stiles 1869); “Report of the Overseers of the Poor in the Town of Brooklyn,” Long Island Star, Mar 29, 1820; “Report of the Overseers of the Poor in the Town of Brooklyn,” Long Island Star, Mar 28, 1821; “Common Council,” Long Island Star, May 16, 1839; “Rain-Water Doctor,” Long Island Star, Jun 6, 1839; “For the Brooklyn Daily Eagle” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan 10, 1852; “Old Potter’s Field,” New-York Daily Tribune, Mar 26, 1857; “Rattle His Bones. . .” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar 25, 1857; “While Excavating. . .” Brooklyn Evening Star, Mar 25, 1857; “A Mortuary Relic,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec 7, 1861; “The Dead. . . Brooklyn Graves that Have Been Opened” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct 2, 1875; [Letter to the Editor], Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 15, 1881; “Shattered Napoleon’s Head,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb 1, 1891

Fordham Manor Church Cemeteries

This detail from an 1868 map shows the two burial places connected with the Fordham Manor Reformed Church—the old public burial ground on Highbridge Road (today’s Fordham Road) and the Church property on the north side of Kingsbridge Road. Red star denotes approximate location of the original church site on Fordham Road, across from the old cemetery.

The modern Fordham Manor Church on Reservoir Avenue near West Kingsbridge Road is the successor to one of the earliest congregations in the Bronx. In 1696, the Dutch Reformed Church organized a society in the area then known as the Manor of Fordham. In 1706 they built their first church on the north side of Fordham Road, in present-day Devoe Park. After this building was destroyed in the Revolutionary War, a new church was built in 1801 on property about a mile north, at Kingsbridge Road. This was the first of three edifices to stand on that site; the second church was built in 1849, and the present building was erected in 1940. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Dutch Reformed Church of Fordham Manor used two local cemeteries to bury their dead—a public burial ground near their original house of worship on Fordham Road and a small cemetery next to their church on Kingsbridge Road.

Public Burial Ground, Fordham Road

Until 1909, an “ancient Dutch burying ground” stood at the southeast corner of today’s Sedgwick Avenue and West Fordham Road, where an apartment building is located today. Exactly when this cemetery was established is not known; it may have been used as far back as the 1600s when Dutch families began to settle in the area. Deeds dated before the Revolution refer to the one-and-a-half-acre cemetery as a public burial ground and it was known to have been used as a free burial ground by local authorities into the 19^th century. During its early history, this public cemetery was linked with the Dutch Reformed church that originally stood 200 yards from it, on the opposite side of Fordham Road. After the congregation moved up to Kingsbridge Road in the early 1800s, their ties with the village burial ground were eventually broken. By the late 1800s, the public burial ground at the intersection of Sedgwick Ave and Fordham Road was known to many locals as the “Berrian Cemetery,” for one of the families who owned land surrounding the cemetery and who had interred a number of their kinfolk in the graveyard.

A 1901 map depicts the old burial ground at the intersection of Fordham Road and Sedgwick Avenue

One 19th-century historian estimated that perhaps 1,000 people were interred in the cemetery on Fordham Road and Sedgwick Avenue. Genealogists who visited the site in the 1870s and 1880s recorded tombstones with family names including Berrian, Valentine, Cromwell, Laurence, DeVoe, Hart, and Rowland. The earliest date found was 1810 and the latest was 1863. Less than two dozen graves had headstones with identifiable inscriptions; many more graves were designated by rough, flat stones with no markings. Guarding the graveyard was a magnificent willow tree, over 20 feet in circumference, which stood at the edge of the property.

1906 view of the burial ground at Fordham Road and Sedgwick Avenue, showing toppled tombstones and the huge willow tree that sheltered the site (Comfort)

By the turn of the century, the cemetery was neglected and partially destroyed by street construction. The western portion of the graveyard was taken by the city in 1874 for the opening of Sedgwick Avenue and a section on the north part of the property was cut off in the 1890s when Fordham Road was widened. Many families had arranged to have their family members’ remains moved to other cemeteries, the numerous disinterments causing further disturbance to the burial ground. Newspaper articles describe it as a place of “sad havoc,” a mass of broken tombstones, brush, and rubbish. Ownership and responsibility of the property was a tangle of uncertainty until the early 1900s when a court-appointed referee ruled that the Camman family, who had acquired the Berrian farm in 1852, could sell the cemetery property once they arranged for removal of the remains. Workmen excavated the cemetery in the winter of 1908-1909 and packed up any bones they found. The exhumed remains were reburied in a plot at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester. In 1927 a six-floor apartment building, still present, was erected on the site of the old Dutch burial ground of Fordham Manor. 

Fordham Manor Church Cemetery, Kingsbridge Road

In 1801, Dennis Valentine, Sr., donated land for construction of a new Dutch Reformed Church at the Manor of Fordham. The plot, 90 feet deep and 74 feet across, was located near the northwest corner of what is now Kingsbridge Road and Reservoir Avenue. In 1836, the church appointed a committee to look for land for a burial place. The congregation apparently continued to use the old burial ground at Fordham Road and Sedgwick Avenue for some time after they moved to their new location, the donation having included only enough property to accommodate the building. In 1849, Dennis Valentine, Jr., donated additional lands adjacent to the 1801 church property to provide sufficient ground for erection of a new house of worship and for a burial ground. The new building was erected on the property immediately adjoining the 1801 structure and facing Kingsbridge Road. Land to the rear of the church was used for a cemetery. The last known interment here was in 1884.

1901 map depicting the Fordham Manor Reformed Church building on Kingsbridge Road, with the cemetery behind it

Several families had vaults in the church cemetery, including members of the Valentine, Briggs, and Archer clans. After Woodlawn Cemetery was established in 1863, each of these families acquired plots there and had the remains of their family members relocated to Woodlawn from the church cemetery. Notable among the removals from the Valentine family vaults were the remains of Virginia Clemm, wife of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1847, Virginia Clemm died while she and her husband were living in a rented cottage (preserved as Poe Cottage) on the Valentine farm. She was laid to rest in the private vault of Dennis Valentine, Sr., which he built in the 1830s on his land adjacent to the 1801 Fordham Manor Church building. Although officially separate from the church burial ground, it was generally considered part of the cemetery. When the Valentine family removed the remains from their vaults in the late 1870s, Virginia Clemm’s remains were taken to Baltimore for reburial alongside her husband, who died in 1849.

A 1912 view of the Fordham Manor Reformed Church building on Kingsbridge Road, erected in 1849. The church cemetery, located to the rear of the building, is not visible (Jenkins)

In August of 1912, the journal Genealogy published inscriptions from the Fordham Manor Reformed Church Cemetery. The burial ground behind the church was described as “a neglected corner plot, overgrown with weeds, where a few tombstones, some badly broken, still remain.”  Inscriptions from the 20 tombstones found at the site included members of the Poole, Webb, Archer, Horton, Corsa, and Webb families. The earliest dated to 1843 and the latest to 1870.

In the early 1920s, the Fordham Manor Reformed Church authorities made plans to purchase a nearby house and have it moved to the church property for use as a parsonage. Before this could be done, it was necessary to clear the cemetery of bodies. After receiving the necessary permissions, in 1925 the remains of 32 people were exhumed from the cemetery behind the church and reburied in a plot at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester. In 1940, the Fordham Manor Reformed Church demolished their 1849 church building and the parsonage, sold the southern portion of their property along Kingsbridge Road, and built a new edifice on the northern part of their land, where their cemetery once stood. The 1940 building, which faces Reservoir Road, is the home of the present Fordham Manor Church, now a nondenominational congregation.

A modern map with arrows denoting the former site of the cemetery at Fordham Rd and Sedgwick Ave and the present Fordham Manor Church at Reservoir Ave near Kingsbridge Rd, on the site of the former church cemetery. Red star denotes the approximate location of the original church site on Fordham Road (OpenStreetMap)

2018 aerial view of the apartment building on the former cemetery site at Fordham Rd and Sedgwick Ave (NYCThen&Now)

2018 aerial view of the present Fordham Manor Church property on Reservoir Avenue, formerly the site of the church cemetery (NYCThen&Now)

Sources: Beers’ 1868 Atlas of New York and Vicinity, Pl 8; Hyde’s 1901 Atlas of the Borough of the Bronx, Pl 25 & 32; Genealogy of the DeVeaux Family (De Voe 1885); History of Bronx Borough (Comfort 1906); The Story of The Bronx (Jenkins 1912); History of Fordham Manor Reformed Church, 1696-1946 (Attwood 1946); “Old Burial Grounds in Westchester Co, NY,”  NYG&B Record 20 (2) 1889; “Notes & Queries,” NYG&B Record 22 (4), 1891; “Neglected Graves at Fordham Heights,” Evening Telegram, May 7, 1892; “A Neglected Cemetery,” New York Times, Dec 22, 1901; “Facts About the Berrian Cemetery,” New York Times, Dec 30, 1901; “Old Historic Cemeteries,” Daily Argus (Mount Vernon, NY) Jan 9, 1905; “Historical Cemetery Despoiled,” Magazine of American History, 36 (11), Nov 1908; “Poole Family Burials,” Genealogy 2(6), Aug 10, 1912; “From a New York Cemetery,” Genealogy 2(7), Aug 17, 1912; “Church in Bronx to Have New Home,” New York Times, Feb 17, 1940; Cemeteries of the Bronx (Raftery 2016)

Bedford Street Methodist Church Graveyard and Vaults

This vintage photo of Bedford and Morton streets in Greenwich Village shows part of the Bedford Street Methodist Church at the southeast corner, just before it was demolished in 1914 (NYPL)

The first Methodist congregation in Greenwich Village was founded in 1805 and in 1810 erected a meeting house at the southeast corner of Bedford and Morton streets. This structure—a frame building with shingled sides—was enlarged in 1830, then replaced in 1840 by a red-brick church. The Bedford Street Methodist church became one of the largest and most prosperous congregations in the city, its membership ranging in size from 800 to 1,200 for most of the 19^th century. Known as “a hot furnace of religious activity” for its evangelism, the Bedford Street Church congregation included the middle classes of old Greenwich Village as well as wealthy local families such as the McLeans, Brushes, DeGroots, Bakers, and Halls.

This detail from an 1854 map shows the Bedford Street Methodist Church at the southeast corner of Bedford and Morton streets in Greenwich Village. The empty lot next to the church along Morton Street is the former church grounds; by that time remains from the cemetery had been exhumed and removed to vaults beneath the church.

The original meeting house faced Bedford Street and behind it stretched a graveyard where approximately 3,000 bodies were buried until the new church was built in 1840. At that time, a system of burial vaults was constructed beneath the church and the cemetery plot along Morton Street was sold. Before the purchaser was allowed to take possession of the cemetery property, the ground was “carefully dug over by employees of the church, who gathered up every human relic and deposited it in the vaults,” according to one account. The vaults beneath the church continued to be used for new interments until about 1865.

Monument at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens marking the plot where remains exhumed from the Bedford Street Methodist Church graveyard and vaults were reburied (Chris Bendall)

The Bedford Street Methodist Church building stood over the bones of several thousand of the “best and truest people of Greenwich Village” until title to the church property passed to the city in 1913 for the southward extension of Seventh Avenue. Before the demolition of the building in January of 1914, remains from the burial vaults beneath the church were moved to a plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens. The homeless Bedford Street Methodist congregation merged with the Metropolitan Methodist Temple on Seventh Avenue and 13th Street, which was later renamed the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church.

Excavations for the Seventh Avenue subway line in 1916 uncovered remains that had been left behind in the old burial ground and vaults at the Bedford Street Methodist Church site. In a report entitled “The Catacombs of Seventh Avenue,” an engineer for the Bureau of Subway Construction detailed the discoveries and described the “huge underground tomb” still present where the church once stood. Constructed of brick and stone, it included 20 separate vaults and two lengthy passages that led to the individual burial chambers. The remains of about 50 people were found at the site and taken to Mount Olivet Cemetery for reburial.

For more than a century the Bedford Street Methodist Church stood at the heart of Greenwich Village. Today Seventh Avenue cuts through the former church site, and passengers on the 1 train ride through what was once the burial place of the Village’s earliest Methodist congregation.

A 2018 aerial view of the southeast corner of the Bedford and Morton Streets, the former site of the Bedford Street Methodist Church and its burial places. Arrow denotes approximate location. (NYCThen&Now)

Location of the Beford Street Methodist Church reburial plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery (Mount Olivet Cemetery Map, with notation by Chris Bendall, Nov 2022)

Sources: Perris’ 1854 Maps of the City of New York, Vol 5 Pl 59; Annals of New York Methodism (Seaman 1892); The American Metropolis, from Knickerbocker Days to the Present Time, Vol 3 (Moss 1897); Nooks & Corners of Old New York (Hemstreet 1899); From Abyssianian to Zion: A Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship (Dunlap 2004); “A Tour Around New York,” Evening Post, Mar 4, 1887; “To Dig Up Bodies Long Buried,” The Sun, Sep 23 1913; “Historic Church to Go,” New York Times, Oct 3, 1913; “Old Graves Block Street,”  New York Tribune, Oct 24, 1913; “Old Church to Go,” New York Times, Nov 13, 1913; Laws of the State of New York Passed at the 137^th Session of the Legislature, Begun January 7^th 1914 and ended March 27^th, 1914, Vol. I, Ch. 138 (New York 1914); “Wrecking of Bedford Street M.E. Church Removes a Historic Shrine,” New York  Press, Dec 18 1913; “Ancient Cemeteries Dug Up in Subways,” New York Times, June 11 1916; Chris Bendall, personal communication, Nov 19, 2022