18th and 19th cemeteries of Manhattan

~• A gathering project only, Do not add profiles here but in the cemetery projects listed below •~
Note that most of these cemeteries no longer exist. Few have been memorialized. Only a fraction of remains were ever removed from defunct cemeteries, they were simply left beneath current parks and buildings.
• Link each Manhattan cemetery project to this one. If they don't exist, create one.
• Add findagrave links to the list.
• ~• the creator of this project welcomes the energies of others to enhance the usefulness of this project.

• African Burial Ground) (memorial)
  • NPS website ; see also: https://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm
  • The African Burial Ground National Monument visitor center address is 290 Broadway, between Duane and Reade Streets.
  • The Maerschalck map of the City of New York is a historic map made in 1754 that clearly shows the African Burial Ground and its surrounding neighborhood
• Catholic Cemetery at 11th and 12th sts.
  • "Nearly the entire block upon which that development is located, between 1st Avenue and Avenue A and 11th and 12th Streets, was from 1833 to 1848 home to the city’s third and largest Catholic cemetery, with 41,000 internments during this time. By 1883, the archdiocese sought to sell off the land, but opposition and legal challenges prevented that from happening until 1909 when the church began the process of removing and reinterring 3-5,000 individuals at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. No one knows what happened to the remains of the other 36,000+ people buried on this site, but the most logical (and not unprecedented) possibility is that like at JJ Walker Field and Washington Square–they remained on the site." ( source )
• Marble Collegiate Church ~• since 1828 ( no affiliation with the Marble cemetery, below )
  • now located at 272 Fifth Avenue at the corner of West 29th Street in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan
• Middle Collegiate Dutch Church
  • Middle Collegiate Church was on Nassau Street near Cedar Street, and was built in 1731. This was very close to the Trinity Church.
  • succeeded by a second Middle Dutch Church at Lafayette Place which was destroyed by fire in 2020.
• New York Marble cemetery (non-sectarian), 52-74 East 2nd Street Between 1st and 2nd Avenues
  • findagrave ; independent website
  • https://www.6sqft.com/peeking-into-the-east-villages-marble-cemeter... captured
  • There are a total of 156 subterranean tombs in the New York Marble Cemetery, in which about 2,100 persons have been laid to rest–the first in 1830 and the last in 1937. Nearly half of the earliest caskets held children ages six and under who had died from diseases
• JJ Walker field
  • "JJ Walker Park between Leroy and Clarkson Streets, with its Little League fields, Recreation Center, and Keith Haring mural-ringed outdoor pool, is built over a pair of 19th-century cemeteries." ( source )
• Trinity (Anglican, then Episcopal)
  • wikipedia ; findagrave ; see also: https://trinitywallstreet.org/
    • see also the later Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum Also known as Trinity Cemetery , Trinity Cemetery Uptown
    • A no-longer-extant Trinity Parish burial ground was the Old Saint John's Burying Ground for St. John's Chapel. This location is bounded by Hudson, Leroy and Clarkson streets near Hudson Square. It was in use from 1806 to 1852.
• St. John's burial ground (from the preceding Trinity listing) ~• no discreet site or unique records
  • "By 1890 Trinity Cemetery was in disrepair and based upon an 1887 act of the State Legislature which allowed the city to acquire property for the creation of small parks in crowded neighborhoods, it had been selected as the site for a new public park. But Trinity resisted the acquisition, fighting the City in court for five years. The City ultimately prevailed, and the embittered church washed their hands of responsibility for the bodies found there, saying it was now the City’s job to arrange for appropriate reinterment. The City seems to have interpreted that charge rather loosely, as they gave families of those buried one year to claim and find a new resting place for their relatives. Of the approximately 10,000 bodies buried there, mostly of middle- and lower-class New Yorkers, 250 were claimed and reinterred by their descendants. The rest remained on the site, which became a park in 1897, and those bodies remain there to this day just below the surface." ( source )
    • The park in 1899, was called “St. John’s Park”.
• St. Mark's in-the Bowery (Episcopal) ; project
  • wikipedia ; findagrave
  • 11th & 12th st. cemetery (near church)
    • "Beginning in 1803, the land underneath much of that block served as the second cemetery to nearby St. Mark’s in the Bowery Church. The land had been donated by Peter Stuyvesant for this use with the stipulation that any of his present or former slaves and their children had the right to be buried there free of charge. Burials continued until 1851; in 1864 the land was sold and the human remains were reinterred at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn."
• St. Paul's (Anglican, then Episcopal), commonly listed as a Trinity Church burial ground." ( source )
  • 162 Fulton St.
  • findagrave ; see also https://trinitywallstreet.org/
• Stuyvesant Chapel
  • incorporated into the grounds of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery when that parish was begun in the 1790s. Burials for the Stuyvesant era at listed there.
• Spring Street Church
  • " The first Spring Street Church was built on this site in 1811 and immediately gained note for its radical integrationist practices. Even after emancipation in New York in 1827, its activities generated fear and loathing in some quarters of the city, so much so that in 1834 violent mobs attacked and sacked the church and the nearby homes of its reverend. The church rebuilt on the site in 1836, and that edifice stood until 1966 when a fire ripped through the structure after it has been closed and abandoned for three years. The church building was razed and asphalted over for a parking lot. No one at the time seemed to recall, or care, that the church’s 19th-century burial ground also remained on the site, just below the surface." ( source )
• Swamp Lutheran Church (1767) geni project
  • aka Old Christ Church at the southeast corner of Frankfort and William streets
  • wikipedia
• Washington Square (potter's field)
  • "some 20,000 bodies remain underneath the park"

Discussion

(from sources)

• "as far back as 1823, New York forbade new burials south of Canal Street. In 1851 that prohibition was extended to new burials south of 86th Street, and the creation of new cemeteries anywhere on the island was banned."
• Can't find your ancestor's place of burial in Manhattan?
  • one reason might be that many tens of thousands of burials have been erased/desecrated by urban renewal. A small fraction of remains were removed to later cemeteries, most being moved en masse to Brooklyn

Suggestion to future project managers going forward

1. When adding burial records: Consider adding profile records to both findagrave and to a geni project. This way, more users can find the burial and cross-reference valuable details.