AFRICAN-AMERICAN ANCESTRAL BURIAL GROUND AT VALE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1863

ADDITONAL NAMES: Vale Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The African-American Ancestral Burial Ground at Vale Cemetery is the final resting place of abolitionists, Underground Railroad activists, advocates for African-American freedom, former slaves, war heroes, and people who were the fiber of Schenectady’s African-American community that began in the late 17th century. Vale Cemetery was established in 1857. Beginning in 1863, the African-American burial ground—formerly called the Colored Plot—was moved from Veeder Avenue to the present location. Vale Cemetery is listed as a National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Site.

Notable members of the African-American community include: Moses Viney (1817-1909), a fugitive slave from Easton, Maryland who traveled the Underground Railroad to New York in 1840. While living in Schenectady, Viney was employed by Eliphalet Nott, President of Union College, and later he established a livery business and became a respected businessman. R.P.G. Wright (1772-1847) was an advocate for the education of African-Americans and president of anti-slavery conventions in the 1840s. Corporal Jared Jackson (1840-1888) served with Company N of the 20th Regiment of Colored Troops in the Union Army during the Civil War. The Vale community hosts an annual Juneteenth celebration at the African-American Burial Ground to honor the day the last slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, June 19th, 1865. The program includes a reenactment of Moses Viney’s escape from slavery.

BCN Contact Information:

Vale Cemetery Preservation, Inc.

vale@valecemetery.org

https://valecemetery.org/african-american

AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND AT HISTORIC ST. AGNES CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1867

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The African Burial Ground at Historic St. Agnes Cemetery is the final resting place of 14 former enslaved people—6 women, 1 man, 2 children, and 5 infants. St. Agnes Cemetery was established in 1867 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. In 2005, 13 human remains were disturbed in an undocumented burial ground during a construction project in Colonie, New York. The remains were placed in the care of the New York State Museum, along with one other individual whose remains were found during a construction project in 1998. Historical and bioarchaeological studies identified the unmarked burial ground as a place once used by individuals enslaved by the prominent colonial Schuyler family, and the analysis determined that most of the individuals were of African ancestry, with one woman of mixed Native American and African ancestry. The burials date to the 1700s to the early 1800s. The area of the former Schuyler estate is known today as Schuyler Flatts and is located along the Hudson River about 5 miles north of Albany, New York. The Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground Project Committee worked with archaeologists, artists, woodworkers, and historians, creating individually decorated burial containers and a reburial ceremony to honor these individuals. In 2015, St. Agnes Cemetery donated this burial site and the Town of Colonie funded the tombstone and marker. The day before the ceremony, the burial containers with the remains laid in state at the Schuyler Mansion, a state historic site once inhabited by relatives of the estate operators. On June 18, 2016, an interdenominational memorial ceremony honored the individuals as their remains were laid to rest with dignity and respect. On June 17, 2017, a bronze plaque was dedicated to mark the Historic African Burial Ground site at Historic St. Agnes Cemetery. The original African Burial Ground site at nearby Schuyler Flatts has a historical marker describing the discovering of the remains and the reburial project.

BCN Contact Information:

Historic St. Agnes Cemetery

Info@ADCemeteries.org
https://www.albany.org/listing/historic-st-agnes-cemetery/1806/

PINE STREET AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND

FOUNDED: 1750

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• Harambee Kingston NY, Inc.

HISTORY:

The Pine Street African Burial Ground (PSABG) is an historic site that since its closing in mid-1800's did not receive official acknowledgment or respect prior to its purchase and protection in 2019 through the partnership of Harambee Kingston NY, Inc, the Kingston Land Trust, Inc. and in collaboration with Scenic Hudson. The Pine Street African Burial Ground is located at 157 Pine Street, Kingston, NY 12414. Kingston, NY was the original Capital of New York State prior to moving the Capital to Albany, NY. The History of the Pine Street African Burial Ground dates back to 1750 when the trustees of Kingston identified and area outside the walled settlement of Kingston (formally Wiltwyck) to be used as a "burial ground" for enslaved Africans and freed African Americans. Enslaved Africans and freed African American are historically noted in the Historical archives of Kingston, NY. Harambee Kingston NY, Inc. is the owner and steward of this sacred site. Prior to acquiring the right of ownership, the "burial ground" did not have any above round markers or headstones and had been used as an lumberyard and eventually a residential property with the unmarked "burial ground" as a residential backyard. Beginning in 2022, Harambee Kingston NY in partnership with SUNY New Paltz department of Archaeology has conducted 3 excavations to confirm the burial of over 23 humans remains so far.

BCN Contact Information:

Harambee Kingston NY, Inc.

info@harambeekingstonny.org

GOD’S ACRE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: Sometime prior to 1867

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

BCN Contact Information:

Friends of Robert Lewis

1892RobertLewis@gmail.com

MOUNT MOOR CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1849

ADDITONAL NAMES: Mount Moor African-American Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Mount Moor Cemetery is a “burying ground for colored people” that was deeded on July 7, 1849 by James and Jane Benson to three African Americans, William H. Moore, Stephen Samuels and Isaac Williams, trustees. Spanning more than a century of active use (1849-ca. 1957), the cemetery is a rare surviving example of a burying ground established for the area’s African American population by African Americans. The last interment in the cemetery occurred in 1986. The cemetery has provided burial space for colored people, including veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and II, and the Korean War. In 1940, the cemetery was formally incorporated as the Mount Moor Cemetery Association, Inc.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the cemetery fell into disrepair. A major refurbishment of the grounds was undertaken in 1977 and again in the 1980s. Although surrounded today by modern commercial development, this once isolated burying ground retains an outstanding degree of integrity. On September 15, 1988, the Clarkstown Town Board voted unanimously to designate Mount Moor Cemetery as a local historical site. Friends of Mount Moor Cemetery was founded in 2021 to protect and preserve this sacred burial ground.

BCN Contact Information:

Friends of Mounty Moor Cemetery

friendsofmountmoorcemetery@gmail.com

HAROLD AVENUE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1808

ADDITONAL NAMES: Jackson Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The Harold Avenue Cemetery, circa 1808, is also known as the Black Jackson Cemetery. Located west of Old Mill Road between Lawrence Place and Harold Avenue in Wantagh is a wooded area that was used as a cemetery. The Harold Avenue burial lot was used by the descendants of the Jackson family slaves prior to 1862, the date of the first recorded burial in the Old Burial Ground on Oakfield Avenue in Wantagh.

Thomas Jackson, a white Revolutionary War veteran, deeded the property to Jeffrey Jackson, who was black, in 1808. It is probable that Jeffrey Jackson was a freed slave.

Slavery in this area had lost favor soon after the Revolutionary War and was not generally practiced. Many of the area's white families were Quakers and were opposed to slavery. The former slave owners often gave land to their freed slaves for their own farms. In many cases, the grateful freed slaves took the surnames of their former masters.

BCN Contact Information:

The Wantagh Preservation Society

wantaghmuseum@gmail.com

516-826-8767

https://nyheritage.org/organizations/wantagh-preservation-society

SECOND ASBURY AME CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1850

ADDITONAL NAMES: Cherry Lane Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S):

• Greater Astoria Historical Society

• NYGenWeb

HISTORY:

The land was deeded in 1850 by John and Tabitha Blake to the Second Asbury AME congregation so they would have a church a cemetery. The congregation included families from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. Among the interred in Benjamin Prine, the last enslaved person born on Staten Island who died in 1900 aged anywhere from 99-111. We know this because he was so well-regarded that his obituary made the wire services and was printed as far away as Iowa. Also, Benjamin, although enslaved at the time, was also a veteran of the War of 1812. (Slavery was outlawed in New York in 1827.)

Sadly, the church was torn down by vandals in the 1880s, and what few headstones that existed were broken. It also had the misfortune of being located in what would become, as far back as the early 1900s, a commercial and business district, and was zoned commercial, even though it was a cemetery.

In the 1950s, the city sued the board members for back taxes totaling over $11,000 because of its zoning. Since there were no headstones and no burials had taken place since c.1910, no one nearby testified that it was a cemetery, although there are municipal maps dating back to the 1850s that show it was. The city therefore illegally seized the property since the taxes couldn’t be paid, the cemetery was bought by a family of real estate attorneys, and it was turned into a Shell station in 1963. By 1985 it had become the strip mall it currently is today. No bodies were ever moved because, it was argued, there was no cemetery.

I was able to track down Benjamin Prine’s descendants, and even though they live a mile from the cemetery and their aunt was on the cemetery board, they knew nothing about their ancestor, the cemetery, or that there had been slavery on Staten Island, because an entire history of theirs had been paved over.

BCN Contact Information:

Heather Quinlan

canvasback.kid1@gmail.com

https://www.heathercue.com/

PERSONS OF COLOR CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1816

ADDITONAL NAMES: None

AFFILIATION(S): None

HISTORY:

Established ca. 1816 exclusively for the use of the area’s black population, the Persons of Color Cemetery at Kinderhook is a historically significant resource that illuminates an important and underrepresented aspect of this early Dutch-settled village’s history. The land on which this burial ground was established was willed for this purpose by John Rogers, a native of Ireland who came to Kinderhook ca. 1795. Rogers recognized the need for a place of repose for Kinderhook’s African-Americans and willed the property, one rood of land, to serve as “a cemetery for the people of colour in said Town ok Kinderhook to be used for that purpose and none other.” The Persons of Color Cemetery was in use for burials until ca. 1861, when it was closed due to lack of space for further interments. A 1914 account indicated that it was used until “every available inch was taken up.” Archeological studies estimate that there may be more than 500 sets of remains on the property. The Persons of Color Cemetery is located adjacent to the village park, Rothermel Park, and contains 15 headstones, 11 of which have legible names and dates of birth and/or death. The cemetery is now listed with the National Register of Historic Sites, as well as the New York State Register of Historic Places, and was formally re-consecrated during a ceremony held on May 13, 2017. The restoration and preservation of the cemetery has been a community effort. The property has been fenced with donated sections of 19th-century wrought-iron fencing, interspersed with planters that are maintained by the Kinderhook Garden Club. The park where the cemetery is located is an active gathering place for the community; village ballfields are located here and the Empire State Trail has a trailhead in the park, ensuring that many walkers and bikers pass by the cemetery. Local residents, as well as many visitors, stop by to read the historic site sign as well as the interpretative sign financed by the Pomeroy Foundation. The Village is currently establishing walking tours and brochures featuring the Persons of Color Cemetery. This site is open every day of the year between dawn and dusk.

BCN Contact Information:

Dale Leiser, Mayor of the Village of Kinderhook

okvillagehall@villageofkinderhook.org