corporate cemeteries, Manhattan

Trinity Church Cemetery

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A Daily News photographer captured the annual Clement Clarke Moore ceremony at Trinity Church Cemetery in December 1967 (NYPL Picture Collection)

One of New York’s oldest Christmas traditions takes place each year at Trinity Church Cemetery in upper Manhattan. Every holiday season since 1911, families of the Church of the Intercession at Broadway and 155th Street have made a pilgrimage to the site where Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), author of A Visit from St. Nicholas, lies buried. This festive annual ceremony begins with a reading of the famous poem (better known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas) at the church, followed by a lantern procession down the sloping paths of the graveyard, where a wreath is laid on the writer’s grave.

Clement Clarke Moore’s grave at Trinity Church Cemetery, December 2017 (Mary French)

Moore is one of over 75,000 people interred at Trinity Church Cemetery, which was established in 1842 when the Episcopal Trinity parish needed new burial space after the closure of their graveyards in lower Manhattan. Located on farmland far north of the settled city, it provided the parish with a rural cemetery planned in a naturalistic design. Designed by architect John Renwick and improved upon by Calvert Vaux and his associates, Trinity Church Cemetery is widely regarded today as one of the most beautiful places in Manhattan.

An 1851 map of Manhattan depicts Trinity Church Cemetery. The estate of renowned artist and naturalist John James Audubon (1785-1851) can be seen at the cemetery’s northwest boundary; Audubon is buried in the cemetery’s Eastern Division.

Occupying 23 acres and four square city blocks, Trinity Church Cemetery is bounded on the north by West 155th Street, on the south by West 153rd Street, on the east by Amsterdam Avenue, and on the west by Riverside Drive. It is divided by Broadway into two equal parts, the Eastern and Western Divisions. The two divisions are encircled by massive stone retaining walls designed by Vaux in 1876, which follow the ground’s steep topography. A picturesque gatehouse and keeper’s lodge, designed by Vaux in 1883 in Victorian Gothic style, is located at the corner of West 153rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Heavy, elaborately designed iron gates are at the cemetery’s entrances, and serpentine walks and drives, designed by Vaux in 1881, lead up the hilly terrain where tombs and mausoleums are arranged in ascending tiers.

Notably absent today is the iron suspension bridge, designed by Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers, that spanned Broadway to connect the two sections of the cemetery from 1872 to 1911. This striking Gothic structure was removed to make room for the foundations of the Church of the Intercession—formerly a chapel of Trinity Church— which stands at the northwest corner of the cemetery’s Eastern Division.

This 1893 photo shows the bridge that spanned Broadway to unite the two section of Trinity Cemetery for 40 years before it was demolished to make way for construction of the Church of the Intercession.

In 1980, Trinity opened a modern community mausoleum complex at the westernmost part of the cemetery, near Riverside Drive. This structure provides much-needed additional burial space, since the cemetery has stopped selling in-ground burial plots except in the most extraordinary circumstances. One such case occurred when former Mayor Edward Koch asked that a special Jewish enclave be created in the non-denominational cemetery so that he could be laid to rest in the heart of the city he once ran. Koch paid $20,000 for his plot, which is near the gatehouse in the cemetery’s Eastern Division.

Mayor Ed Koch’s burial plot at Trinity Church Cemetery, December 2017 (Mary French)
Aerial view of Trinity Church Cemetery, 2024 (GoogleEarth)

View more photos of Trinity Church Cemetery

Sources:  Map of New-York North of 50th St (Dripps 1851); King’s 1893 Handbook of New York City; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form—Chapel of the Intercession Complex and Trinity Cemetery, 1980; Churchyards of Trinity Parish in the City of New York, 1697-1969 (Butler 1969); The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (Sloane 1991); AIA Guide to New York City (White et al 2010); “Old Trinity Bridge Down,” New York Times, Oct 15, 1911; “Service at Moore’s Grave,” New York Times, Dec 25, 1931; “Last Chance…No Kidding,” New York Times, Dec 19, 1993; “Short on Final Resting Places, Trinity Builds a Mausoleum,” New York Times, Aug 1, 1978; “City Cemeteries Face Gridlock,” New York Times, Aug 13, 2010; “Koch, Resolved to Spend Eternity in Manhattan, Buys a Cemetery Plot, New York Times, Apr 22, 2008; “101 Years of Tradition: The Church of the Intercession Celebrates Clement Clarke Moore,” Audubon Park Perspectives, Dec 11, 2011; “Resting Place for the High and the Low,” New York Times, Feb 6, 2015; New York’s Oldest Holiday Tradition , Trinity Church, Dec 17, 2018; Uptown Manhattan Trinity Church & Mausoleum (Trinity Church)

Queens, religious cemeteries

St. James Episcopal Churchyard

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Detail view, Robert J. Marks monument at St. James Episcopal Churchyard, 2011 (DMC/Find a Grave)

A prominent monument in the graveyard adjoining St. James Episcopal Church in Elmhurst, Queens, memorializes Robert Joseph Marks, a young Civil War soldier who died in 1864. The faded inscription on his tombstone includes these words, which Marks wrote to his father in a letter dated January 31, 1863:
Dear Father: You ask me whether I am not yet tired of soldiering. I must answer you as I always did before, that as long as there is a soldier to fight for the Confederacy, so long will I fight for the Union. I trust in God and believe He will never forsake me.

After Marks’ death, his body was returned to his family in Elmhurst—then known as the village of Newtown—where it was laid to rest among the faithful dead in St. James Churchyard. St. James Church was established in 1735, when the Church of England congregation of Newtown built a house of worship at what is now the southwest corner of 51st Avenue and Broadway. Distinguished citizens associated with the parish included the Reverend Samuel Seabury, Jr. (1729-1796), the first American Episcopal Bishop, and Reverend Benjamin Moore (1748-1816), a president of King’s College (now Columbia University). In 1848, the parish built a new church one block north on Broadway, between St. James and Corona Avenues. This is the present site of St. James Church. Old St. James Church, which still stands at its original site, was converted into a parish hall.

An 1873 map of Newtown shows St. James Episcopal Church and the churchyard cemetery at the northeast corner of Broadway and Union (now Corona) Avenue. Old St. James Church can be seen a block away, at the southwest corner of Broadway and Cook (now 51st) Avenue.

St. James’ parish cemetery is situated in the yard behind its current church at 84-07 Broadway. This building was constructed in 1976, following the destruction of the 1848 church by fire. The small churchyard burial ground has graves of parishioners who were laid to rest between 1848 and 2005. It also includes burials that were moved from the graveyard that once adjoined Old St. James Church. About 300 tombstones stand at the site today; the oldest ones date to the early 1800s and mark the graves of members of the Moore family and other settlers of Colonial Newtown.

James Hazard’s tombstone at St. James Episcopal Churchyard, 2011 (DMC/Find a Grave)

Oddly, the very oldest gravestone in St. James Churchyard does not mark a grave. The beautifully carved brownstone marker in memory of James Hazard, who died in 1765, was placed in St. James Churchyard for safekeeping after it was found in a pile of debris on the former Hazard family farm in Jackson Heights in 1925. James Hazard was a local judge and one of the first wardens at St. James Church. The tombstone, remarkably well-preserved, likely originally marked his burial site on the farm; the current location of his remains is unknown.

Robert J. Marks monument at St. James Episcopal Churchyard, 2011 (DMC/Find a Grave)

Robert J. Marks’ grave is directly behind St. James Church. A corporal of Company B, 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment, Marks survived 22 battles before receiving a gunshot wound to his leg in the fighting at Deep Bottom, Virginia, in late July 1864. Taken to a Philadelphia hospital for treatment, he died on September 5, 1864, from an infection that spread to his bloodstream. The monument marking his resting place is a four-sided tapering shaft of white marble and granite. In 1885, Civil War veterans living in and around Newtown organized a Grand Army of the Republic post, naming it Robert J. Marks Post No. 560 in his honor. Though obscure today, Marks’ gravesite in St. James Churchyard was a sacred place for the local community in the decades following the Civil War, and imposing ceremonies were held there each Memorial Day until the turn of the 20th century.

A view of St. James Episcopal Churchyard, June 2010 (Mary French)
A 2023 aerial view of the St. James Episcopal Church and cemetery (Google Earth)

See more photos of St. James Episcopal Churchyard

Sources: Beers 1873 Atlas of Long Island, Pl 51;  The Annals of Newtown (Riker 1852); Description of Private and Family Cemeteries in the Borough of Queens: A Supplement (Queens Topographical Bureau 1975); Old Saint James Episcopal Church Designation Report (Landmarks Preservation Commission 2017); Robt. J. Marks death certificate, “Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, City Death Certificates, 1803-1915,” FamilySearch; “Newtown’s G.A.R. Veterans,” Brooklyn Daily Times, Sep 18, 1888; “Died for the Union,” Brooklyn Citizen, Nov 11, 1889; “Changes in the Churches,” Brooklyn Daily Times, May 27, 1893; “Find Headstone of Jas. Hazzard Who Died in 1765,” Brooklyn Daily Times, Apr 12, 1925; “1861-62: Robert Joseph Marks to Herman Marks,” Spared & Shared 13, August 29, 2016

African American cemeteries, Brooklyn, religious cemeteries

Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Churchyard

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Notice of the removal of the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Churchyard that appeared in newspapers in April 1888.

When the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, few of the city’s residents knew that an old graveyard lay within a hundred feet of the bridge entrance on Sands Street. The cemetery adjoined the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Methodist Church established in Brooklyn and one of the city’s earliest racially mixed congregations.

The Sands Street congregation was founded in 1794 and built its church on land in downtown Brooklyn that had been used as a site for open-air Methodist services since 1766. Worshippers at Sands Street included whites, free blacks, and ex-slaves. Of the church’s 76 members in 1798, 50 were white and 26 were black. By 1810, the Sands Street congregation had grown beyond the capacity of their original house of worship, which was replaced by a new church large enough to seat 1,200 people. As the congregation grew, relations between the white and black members deteriorated. In 1817, the black members of the Sands Street church separated and established Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Church. The Sands Street congregation continued to flourish and, in 1844, built a third, larger edifice to replace their 1810 church. A fire destroyed this new church in 1848, but it was immediately rebuilt.

An 1834 map shows the location of Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church on the south side of Sands Street, between Washington and Fulton Streets in downtown Brooklyn.

During the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Sands Street church trustees resisted the bridge company’s efforts to acquire their property, reportedly turning down an offer of $125,000. But after the bridge opened, the increasing tide of traffic outside the church doors rendered this stronghold of Methodism untenable for religious purposes. In 1888, they sold the property for $107,000 to broker Charles E. Bill, Jr.; afterward, the site was acquired by the bridge trustees.

This snippet from an1887 property map shows the Sands Street church complex. The graveyard, not indicated, was between the church and Sunday school, and graves were also located underneath both buildings. The Brooklyn Bridge approach and facilities can be seen opposite and adjacent to the property.

One of the terms of the sale of the Sands Street property was that all the bodies of the dead buried in the churchyard were to be removed. In the spring of 1888, the church trustees made arrangements to remove the remains to a plot at Evergreens Cemetery in the spring of 1888. The graveyard at that time was a small vestige of what it had once been, the church building and Sunday school erected in 1848 having covered over or caused the removal of many graves to other parts of the yard. What was left was a 40 x 50 foot graveyard immediately behind the church, with scores of tombstones set up without reference to the resting places they originally marked. The earliest tombstone commemorated Hannah Stryker, who died in 1787, and the most recent ones memorialized church members who died in the 1830s. A small 20 x 20 foot section of the burial ground, lacking headstones, contained the remains of early black members of the congregation.

Illustration depicting a portion of the Sands Street churchyard in 1882.

After the removal of the remains in the graveyard, the buildings on the church property were demolished, and the ground carefully excavated to a depth of eight feet throughout the entire length and breadth of the site. At least 30 more graves were found under the church, and dozens were found under the Sunday school. By the time the work was completed, the remains of 546 individuals had been disinterred from the Sands Street church property and reburied at Evergreens Cemetery.

In 1889, the Sands Street congregation built a new house of worship on Clark and Henry streets, where they remained until 1947, when the congregation disbanded and the church was razed. Today, the site on Sands Street, where Brooklyn’s pioneer Methodists once worshipped and were laid to rest, is obliterated by the Brooklyn Bridge approach and Cadman Plaza Park.

A 1904 property map depicts the former Sands Street church site obliterated by the Brooklyn Bridge terminal.
A 2024 aerial view; arrow indicates approximate location of the former site of the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Churchyard.

Sources: Martin’s 1834 Map of Brooklyn, Kings County, Long Island; Sanborn’s 1887 Insurance Maps of Brooklyn 2(38); Sanborn’s 1904 Insurance Maps of Brooklyn 2 (Pl 20); Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn, N.Y. (Warriner 1885); Green Oasis in Brooklyn: The Evergreens Cemetery 1849-2008 (Rousmaniere 2008); “A Forlorn Graveyard,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 29, 1887; “Bought by Bill,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar 22, 1888; “The Sands-Street Church Sold,” New York Times, Mar 23, 1888; “To Be Exhumed,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr 14, 1888; “Sands Street M.E. Church,” Brooklyn Times Union, Apr 21, 1888; “The Sands Street Graveyard,” Brooklyn Citizen, May 2, 1888; “Buried Slaves,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 19, 1888; “From the Old Sands Street Churchyard,” Brooklyn Daily Times, Jun 2, 1888; “Members Tell of Early Days,” New York Times, Jun 18, 1894

Manhattan, religious cemeteries

Church Burial Vault, Prince and Lafayette Streets

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Newspaper headline, February 18, 1877

In February 1877, several city newspapers reported the removal of bodies from an old church burial vault in downtown Manhattan. The Sun described the work as follows:

For three days past laborers have been opening a great vault at Prince and Marion streets and taking from it the bodies that have been resting there for over fifty years. Who erected the vault cannot be ascertained. It has not been opened for twenty-seven years. It adjoins the Reformed Presbyterian Church and contained over three hundred bodies, all piled one on top another, without shelves between. The lot occupied by the vault has been sold for building purposes by the Presbytery, and after advertising for relatives the Presbytery engaged the laborers to remove the remains to Maple Grove Cemetery, Long Island. The vault is 70 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 9 feet high. Some of the black walnut coffins are well preserved. Only seventeen coffin plates with legible names have been found. The silk ribbons were wonderfully well preserved. There was one immense coffin. On being opened it was found to contain the skeleton of a woman. The skull was nearly perfect. It broke in halves, however, on being touched, and on the inside was discovered a spider’s web and in it a big spider watching for prey.

The burial vault adjoined the church, located at the northeast corner of present-day Prince and Lafayette Streets, that had served as a house of worship for four separate congregations between 1824 and 1877. The building was erected in 1824 by a society of Universalists formed under the ministry of the Rev. Nehemiah Dodge. That congregation disbanded just a few years later, in 1829, selling their property to the newly created Union Presbyterian Church. Union Presbyterian numbered about a hundred congregants by 1830 but was encumbered by heavy debt; they sold the church in 1835 to the First Reformed Presbyterian Church and dissolved in 1838.

Detail from an 1852 property map showing the Presbyterian church at Prince and Marion (now Lafayette) streets. The property was owned by Shiloh Presbyterian Church at that time.

The Reformed Presbyterian congregation, founded in 1797 and previously located at Chambers Street, flourished at the Prince Street location and had grown to almost 350 communicants by 1846. In 1848, they sold the Prince Street property to Shiloh Presbyterian Church and moved to a new house of worship on Twelfth Street. The Shiloh Presbyterian congregation, founded in 1822 as the First Colored Presbyterian Church, totaled about 400 members when they acquired the Prince Street property. The Shiloh congregation remained there until 1877, when the Presbytery of New York conveyed the Prince Street site to businessmen Eliphalet W. Bliss and James H. Williams. After the sale, the Shiloh congregation worshipped at several more locations; in 1895, its remaining members formed St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, which continues to today.

This map of the church property at Prince and Marion Streets appears on the 1848 deed that conveyed the land and buildings from the Reformed Presbyterian Church to the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. The property boundaries, church building, and parsonage are delineated, but the burial vault is not indicated.

No one has ever been able to determine which congregation constructed and used the burial vault and who was buried there. No burial register, if one was kept, has been found, and no references to the burial place at Prince and Marion streets have been located in any property or church records, obituaries, or other sources until the time of the removal. The earliest reference to the vault is in 1875 property records, when the Shiloh congregation and the Presbytery of New York began to make arrangements to sell the premises with the condition that the remains would be removed from the vault. The burial chamber was likely built before 1838, when a city ordinance prohibited construction of new burial vaults below 14th Street, and probably used no later than 1851, when interments below 86th Street were prohibited.

Marker at the reburial plot at Maple Grove Cemetery (Queens Chronicle)

The inscriptions on the handful of coffin plates found in the vault during the removal are the only clues that offer some identity for those who were laid to rest there and suggest a time frame for its use. As reported by the New York Herald, the dates of death on the 17 legible plates ranged from 1824 to 1844 and the names included Catharine Betts, John Bevan, Ann Jane Blair, Henry D. Coit, Mary Ann Essex, Mary Hall, Joel Holden, Philip Kessner, Stephen P. Laune, John McDougall, Samuel Neill, Jane Poole, William E.F. Randolph, Adam Steele, Moses Stephenson, and Mary Jane Vanderpoole. These are the few details connected with the remains of over 300 individuals that were conveyed from the vault to a plot at Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens. The reburial plot is marked with a stone monument reading, “Removals from church vaults at the corner of Prince and Marion Streets, New York, February 1877.” The site of the forgotten church burial vault is now occupied by a seven-floor mixed commercial and residential building.

This snippet from the present NYCityMap shows the site where the church property at Prince and Marion (Lafayette) streets was located. Where exactly the burial vault was situated on the property is unclear.

Sources: Perris’ 1852 Maps of the City of New York; “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” FamilySearch; Shiloh Presbyterian Church records, 1848-1888 (Presbyterian Historical Society Pearl Digital Collections); A History of the Churches of All Denominations in the City of New York from the First Settlement to the Year 1846 (Greenleaf 1846);  The Earliest Churches of New York and Its Vicinity (Disoway 1865); “Life in the Metropolis,” The Sun, Feb 17, 1877; “The Forgotten Dead,” New York Herald, Feb 18, 1877; “What Was Found in an Old Burial Vault,” New York Tribune, Feb 19, 1877; Bodies Removed from Church Vault; New York Genealogical & Biographical Record 8(3), July 1877; “African Burial Ground Found at Maple Grove,” Queens Chronicle, Jul 7, 2011

corporate cemeteries, religious cemeteries, Staten Island

Asbury Cemetery

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A view of Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church and cemetery in the early 1900s (Vosborgh 1922).

A once-abandoned cemetery on Staten Island that serves as the final resting place for Ichabod B. Crane, a distinguished military officer and the namesake for the main character in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” has recently been revitalized. Asbury Cemetery, situated on the west side of Richmond Avenue at the southeast corner of Amsterdam Place in New Springville, was long overgrown with trees and foliage and a target for vandals. Now maintained by Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, the property has been cleaned up and improved, and previously unused portions of the grounds have been developed for new burials.

This historic four-acre site was once two distinct burial grounds—the churchyard cemetery of the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church and the separate Springville Cemetery. Asbury Methodist Church was constructed in 1802 near the site of the present church on Richmond Avenue (now owned by SonRise Faith Church), which was built in 1849 to replace the original structure. The church was named for Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop consecrated in the United States and a circuit rider who preached on Staten Island. The Asbury Methodist congregation buried their dead in their churchyard at the north end of the present cemetery property.

This snippet from an 1859 map shows Asbury Methodist Church (today SonRise Faith Church) on Richmond Avenue, enveloped by the churchyard burial ground and Springville Cemetery that form present-day Asbury Cemetery. Ichabod Crane’s home (denoted with star) in Chelsea Heights is also shown.

The origin of Springville Cemetery, located in the southern section of the present cemetery site, is obscure, but it appears to have been a community cemetery owned by John T. Merserau and his wife, Eliza, from the 1850s until the 1890s. The two cemeteries merged in 1893, when Eliza Merserau, then a widow, sold Springville Cemetery to the trustees of Asbury Methodist Church for one dollar. Asbury Church operated the combined cemeteries as a nonsectarian burial ground, which became known as New Springville Cemetery and finally Asbury Cemetery, until the congregation disbanded in the 1970s.

Tombstone marking the grave of Elizabeth and Richard Drummond at Asbury Cemetery (Vosburgh 1922).

The number of interments in Asbury Cemetery is unknown, though a 1922 inventory of tombstone inscriptions located about 500 graves at the site. The oldest identified grave is that of Gitty Cruser Simonson, who died in 1805. Other family names include Ansley, Bedell, Crocheron, Decker, De Puy, Merserau, Prall, and Wood. An inscription on one old tombstone tells the tragic story of Elizabeth Drummond and her 15-month-old son Richard, who drowned in the cabin of a ferry boat on the morning of June 16, 1812, when a severe gale of wind upset the vessel during its passage to Manhattan. Elizabeth and Richard were the wife and son of Rev. Thomas Drummond, who was assigned to Staten Island in 1810 to pastor the Asbury and Woodrow Methodist churches.

Asbury Cemetery is noteworthy as one of Staten Island’s original Methodist graveyards and as a burial place for some of the area’s historically prominent families, but its clear claim to fame is as the site of Ichabod Crane’s grave. Since the mid-20th century, fans of literary history, film buffs, and curiosity seekers have visited the cemetery to see the monument marking the grave of Colonel Ichabod B. Crane, the probable namesake of the schoolteacher pursued by the Headless Horseman in Washington Irving’s 1819 short-story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and its modern television and film adaptations. Although Irving never explicitly stated where he came up with his hero’s memorable name, scholars consider Col. Crane the likely inspiration since Washington Irving and Ichabod B. Crane were both stationed at Sackets Harbor, New York, during the War of 1812, and Irving was famous for borrowing the names of people he knew for his storytelling.

Ichabod Crane gravestone at Asbury Cemetery, April 2017 (Mary French).

Although known today for his connection to the Irving story, Ichabod B. Crane was a career military officer who is worthy of remembrance for his own accomplishments. Born on July 18, 1787, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1809, where he was assigned to the USS United States, the first of the six original frigates of the US Navy. In 1812, he transferred to the Army, where he was commissioned as captain and commander of the newly-organized Battery B, First Artillery at Fort Pike in Sackets Harbor. During the War of 1812, Crane took part in the capture of Forts York and George in Canada, the first American victories of the war on the Niagara Frontier. Crane’s later career included leading troops in the Black Hawk War of 1832, becoming colonel and commander of the First Artillery in 1843, and an assignment as acting governor of the Military Asylum in Washington, D.C., from 1851 to 1853.

Looking for a place to spend his declining years, Crane and his wife Charlotte built a house in 1853 at 3525 Victory Boulevard in what was then known as the Chelsea Heights section of Staten Island. Crane was still on active duty, and his home was known as the scene of much “army hospitality,” where many notable guests were entertained. Suffering from failing health for some time, Crane died on October 5, 1857, and was buried in Springville Cemetery, now Asbury Cemetery. A marble obelisk with the cross-cannon insignia of the First Artillery marks Crane’s plot, which is near the south end of Asbury Cemetery.

A mid-20th century photo of Ichabod Crane’s house at 3525 Victory Boulevard. The house remained in Crane’s family until 1882 when it was sold to Robert Ferguson of Travis whose family lived there until it was sold to developers in 1966. Despite efforts by preservationists to save the historic structure, it was demolished in 1989 (Reed 1963).

After the Asbury Methodist congregation dissolved in the 1970s, Asbury Cemetery was abandoned, neglected, and vandalized. The Crane monument in particular has been defaced and broken many times; after several incidents in the early 2000s, it was restored in 2004 by Joseph G. Hall & Sons Monuments of Staten Island. In 2013, the New York State Division of Cemeteries appointed Washington Cemetery to maintain Asbury Cemetery and to make a portion of the untouched land within the cemetery available for new interments.

Gravestones in Asbury Cemetery, April 2017 (Mary French).
A 2022 aerial view of Asbury Cemetery (GoogleEarth).

View more photos of Asbury Cemetery

Sources: Walling’s 1859 Map of Staten Island; “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,” FamilySearch; Records of the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church at New Springville, Staten Island (Vosburgh 1922); “Ichabod Crane and Washington Irving,” Staten Island Historian 24(2) (Reed 1963); Ichabod Crane House, Victory Boulevard, Staten Island (HABS 1988); The Cemeteries of Staten Island (Salmon 2006); “From the Mercantile Advertiser,” Evening Post, June 17 1812; “Died,” New-York Weekly Museum, Jun 20, 1812; “Asbury Church Ends Long History,” Staten Island Advance, Jun 4, 1972; “‘Immortalized,’ But a Ruin,” Staten Island Advance, Nov 25, 1973; “Ichabod Crane Gets Headstone Set Aright,” New York Times, May 6, 1976; “Ichabod Crane’s Namesake? Or Not,” New York Times, Oct 27, 2002; “An Open Letter to the People of Staten Island,” Staten Island Advance, Jan 19, 2003; “Cemetery Honors Restorer of ‘Sleepy Hollow’ Grave,” Staten Island Advance, Apr 9, 2004; “Ichabod Crane Gravestone Vandalized Again,” Staten Island Advance, Aug 13, 2004; “Restored Ichabod Crane Monument Put in Place,” Staten Island Advance, Oct 29, 2004; “Historic Cemetery, Once Overgrown, Gets a Facelift,” SILive.com, Apr 19, 2015

© Mary French 2010-2026

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