In the midst of carving pumpkins and picking out Halloween costumes, the fall season’s brisk weather is also ideal for strolling through the North Fork’s oldest and most historic cemeteries.
Here’s a roundup of a few recommended sites and some notable headstones to look out for during your visit.
Click on the tabs below for details about Old Burying Ground in Cutchogue (2); Southold Presbyterian Cemetery (3); Old Bethany Cemetery in Mattituck (4); East Marion Cemetery (5); and more (6).
Old Burying Ground in Cutchogue
Route 25, Cutchogue (Google Map)
(Listing on findagrave.com)
The Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council assumed ownership of the Old Burying Ground about 20 years ago and is restoring the site.
The Cutchogue cemetery is the second oldest graveyard on the North Fork after Southold, according to Zachary Studenroth, the council’s director.
The oldest headstones at the site date back to around the 1720s and most were imported from Connecticut, he said.
But the burial ground’s earliest graves are unmarked.
“The burying ground was laid out in the 1680s or ’90s,” Studenroth said. “The reason there aren’t any stones from that early period is many of them would have been carved in wood and then painted or carved with an inscription and they didn’t last very long in the ground.”
Studenroth said he finds the headstone J.R. Horton had made for his three wives amusing — especially since the husband isn’t buried with them. The inscription reads: J.B. Horton erects this stone to perpetuate the memory of Deborah Osborn, Jerusha Halleck, and Jerusha Billard who between the years of 1815 and 1855 were each (in succession) his faithful wives aged 37, 44, 63.
Another unusual one to check out is E.C. Mapes which reads: “Our favorite teacher.” Mapes was beloved by her students so much that they purchased the monument as a way to honor her after she died in 1878, Studenroth said.
Scroll down for more photos.
Southold Presbyterian Cemetery
First Presbyterian Church of Southold, 53100 Main St., Southold (Google Map)
(Listing on findagrave.com)
First Presbyterian Church of Southold has New York State’s oldest burial ground of English settlers, according to Jane Andrews, director of the Southold Presbyterian Cemetery.
As in Cutchogue, many of its oldest graves are unmarked.
“There are a lot of blank spaces in the cemetery and there are probably people buried there, but the stones have disintegrated,” she said. “Sometimes in the early days they used wood and that would have rotted away.”
The oldest headstone there is dated 1658, though Andrews said it was replaced sometime in the 1930s. That grave belongs to Helena Underhill, wife of Capt. John Underhill, a noted “Indian fighter” of that era.
The next oldest headstones are of two Southold founders, Rev. John Youngs and William Wells. It is unclear when the two men died as their death dates read “1671/2.”
“Were these guys resurrected?” Andrews said with a laugh, before explaining the discrepancy. “The part that I love, if you like history, is that there were rival calendars at the time.”
New Year’s was January 1 for one calendar and late March for another, she said.
“[If] someone dies in the first three months of a year, they don’t know what year to use,” she said.
Andrews said the cemetery’s most famous headstone is that of Ezra L’Hommedieu.
“He fought for the Independence and served in the first and second Provincial Congress and was a member of the Continental Congress,” she said.
Scroll down for more photos, then click on the next tab for Old Bethany Cemetery in Mattituck.
Old Bethany Cemetery
Mattituck Presbyterian Church, 12605 Main Rd., Mattituck (Google Map)
(Listing on findagrave.com)
The Old Bethany Cemetery in Mattituck at Mattituck Presbyterian Church has headstones dating back to the 1720s. Like Cutchogue and Southold, there are also several unmarked graves.
Norman Wamback of the Mattituck-Laurel Historical Society said his unnamed twin brother, who died at childbirth, is buried in one of those plots.
One of the cemetery’s most prominent headstones is that of the Wickham ax murder victims of 1854.
Cutchogue farmer James Wickham got into an argument with one of his workers, Nicholas Behan, who was harassing a housemaid who refused to marry him, according to “Murder on Long Island: A Nineteenth-Century Tale of Tragedy & Revenge.” The book, written by Southold Historical Society director Geoffrey Fleming and collections manager Amy Folk, details how Behan was fired and later snuck into the Wickham home and used an ax to kill the family. After he fled to a nearby swamp, he was captured, tried and convicted of the murders. On Dec. 15, 1854, Behan became the third-to-last person to be hanged in Suffolk County.
Wamback said for him the most memorable stones in the cemetery are those of the Hudson family’s three children, dated 1754.
“It’s so pitiful,” he said, noting how the years, months and days are listed on each child’s headstone. “These people lost all of their children during an epidemic. They just died within a couple of months of each other. They erected a beautiful stone. There’s a beautiful poem under it also.”
Scroll down for more photos, then click on the next tab for the East Marion Cemetery.
East Marion Cemetery
195 Cemetery Rd., East Marion (Google Map)
(Listing on findagrave.com)
Although the East Marion Cemetery doesn’t have plots as old as its neighboring burying grounds, visitors to the quaint site can see one of the area’s most famous graves.
The remains of American fine artist Mark Rothko still lie in the cemetery, despite his family’s legal battle to move them.
After Rothko committed suicide in February 1970, his friend and fellow artist Theodore Stamos offered a family burial plot in East Marion. Rothko’s family sued nearly four decades later to have his remains disinterred and moved to a Jewish cemetery in Westchester County. East Marion Cemetery Association secretary Nancy Poole and Stamos’s sister objected, but they were overruled by a judge.
“They went to court and won the right to take his remains,” said Poole. “But they never did.”
As for the rest of the cemetery, Poole said the land was opened up about a year ago for new plots.
“People are buying them up,” she said. “They want to be on lakefront property.”
Click on the next tab for a list of more North Fork cemeteries.
Here’s some more recommended cemeteries to check out and their listings on findagrave.com:
Fanning Family Burial Ground in Flanders
Hashamomack Cemetery in Southold
Saint John the Evangelist Cemetery in Riverhead
Slave Burying Ground in Orient
Sound Avenue Cemetery in Northville
Sterling Cemetery in Greenport
Swedenborgian Cemetery in Riverhead
Let us know which is cemetery and headstones are notable to you in our comment section below or email jnuzzo@timesreview.com.
This story was originally published on October 31, 2014.
