Back in January I wrote several diaries about my great-grandmother Eva. She came to Brooklyn from what is now Ukraine in 1911, when she was 16. In October 1912, when she was 17, she married my great-grandfather. Their first child, a boy named Adam, was born ten months later, in August 1913, a century ago this week. He lived only a few hours. They later had four more children (including my grandmother), all of whom lived to adulthood.
My aunt, one of the most tender-hearted people I know, often thinks of their first child, Adam, who was born, and died, more than 40 years before she was born. It always bothered her that we did not know where Adam was buried. My great-grandparents are buried in a plot in Queens, but that wasn’t purchased until my great-grandfather died in 1940. Nearby, in the same cemetery, is a section for babies who died and my aunt always mentioned Adam when we went there.
Last summer I took from my grandparents’ house (which we’re preparing to sell) a metal box full of documents. It contained all sorts of insurance policies and other assorted legal documents, but it also contained…a folder of cemetery deeds. In that folder was a 1929 letter from a Brooklyn funeral home specifying the exact plot where Adam is buried. It’s in Most Holy Trinity Cemetery, in Brooklyn near the Queens border. At Christmas my wife and I went there, and it was well worth the trip.
This letter told me exactly where Adam was buried
It’s a fascinating place, one of thousands of hidden nooks and crannies in New York City that even most lifelong residents have never heard of. The cemetery is at the end of a long avenue, but in a dead-end block covered in cobblestones and reached only by passing under a dark stone railway arch bearing tracks for the elevated subway. The only things on the other side of the arch are the gate to Most Holy Trinity Cemetery, a service entrance to another cemetery, and one industrial business. Tucked away like that, it’s largely unknown. But it’s one of the most unique cemeteries I’ve ever seen. And I've seen a lot of cemeteries.
The cemetery began as the parish cemetery of the Roman Catholic Most Holy Trinity Church in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The parish, which has a stunning church building, was founded in 1841. In New York in those days, the parish lines also were very strict. These days, you can just go to a different church if you don’t like your local parish because the building’s ugly, or the pastor’s a jerk, or the music is boring. In those days you couldn’t, any more than you could send your property taxes to the next jurisdiction instead of where you lived. The lines on the map being sacred, you’d have to move. Many people did move a lot within New York City in those days, but I’m not sure parishes were the reason.
The beautiful interior of the -- allegedly haunted -- Most Holy Trinity Church in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Most Holy Trinity was different. It was the first of the “ethnic” parishes. At the time the Catholic parishes in New York were almost exclusively Irish. As new Catholic immigrant groups arrived, the dioceses decided to allow parishes that were defined not by geographic boundaries, but by a common language and culture. Most Holy Trinity, in 1841, was the first German-American parish, with its first pastor a native of Austrian Tirol. Other German parishes and many Italian parishes came later. Today, due to demographic changes in the neighborhood, Most Holy Trinity offers masses in Polish and Spanish each Sunday, but no longer in German. In this instance, demand creates supply.
In the early days, parishioners were buried in the churchyard beside the original church. As soon as 1851, when most parishioners were still of German descent, the parish relocated the bodies from the churchyard to a larger tract of land to the east, on the Brooklyn-Queens border in an area where some two dozen cemeteries are crammed together. Three decades later, the current church building was built on the site of the original churchyard.
This fact, combined with the facts that the church has a number of a (now closed) byzantine network of hidden passages on four levels and that several people have died suddenly there over the years, has led many people to claim that the church is haunted. It's said that, even when it's sure there's nobody else in the building, loud footsteps can be heard in it (My question is how you can tell there's nobody else in the church; it's pretty large and still has four levels).
But I digress. This is about the cemetery, which the parish administered for many years, but today it is run by Catholic Cemeteries of the Diocese of Brooklyn. Befitting the cemetery’s origins, most of the names there are German or Polish, the two major ethnic groups within the parish and its neighborhood. But what makes the cemetery so unique is that, until very recently, all of the markers are made of hollow metal or wood. Only in the last couple of decades has Catholic Cemeteries allowed placement of some flat stone markers.
To reach the cemetery one must pass under these elevated subway tracks
Some of the interesting grave markers at Most Holy Trinity
Many of the earlier grave markers are for German immigrant families
I have seen two explanations for this. I’ll start with the most romantic. According to that tale, a German immigrant tinsmith who belonged to the parish bought land in a then-remote area, then offered it to the parish as a cemetery on the condition that he be engaged to make all the monuments. He worked only with metal or wood.
His great-granddaughter, however, said she is not aware of him owning the land at any point. She claims the land, which used to belong to the (much larger) neighboring Cemetery of the Evergreens, was sold directly by that cemetery to the parish. Because the land was wet, stone markers would sink. Thus the parish came to the tinsmith, not the other way around.
The many large crucifix grave markers led an early-20th-century newspaper reporter to call Most Holy Trinity an “extraordinary spectacle of a multiplied Golgotha”
These are among the larger monuments in the cemetery
This photo shows some of the newer flat stone markers; larger stone markers are not allowed because they are too heavy and will sink in the wet ground
Either way, this tinsmith had a steady stream of work for life. The end result is a very interesting cemetery. Some of the markers are not holding up well, but many are in good shape, if a bit timeworn. It’s one of those places that’s unlike just about anything else I’ve seen, kind of like a cemetery equivalent of the Badlands or Bryce Canyon, or maybe the
Oak Bluffs
cottages.
Visible behind the tin markers of Most Holy Trinity and the fence with barbed wire are the more familiar granite monuments of the neighboring Cemetery of the Evergreens
A closer look at two markers, one rusted and the other largely not
Many of the larger hollow tin monuments sit at angles that might cause them to topple over if they were solid granite
Some of the tin monuments, as you might expect, are holding up better than others. The "others" are rusted (a very cool effect in my opinion) or, in many cases, bent as if someone tried to make a pretzel of them. These timeworn grave markers (I almost typed "stones"), along with the isolation of the cemetery, the forbidding railroad bridge under which one must pass to access it, the gloomy cobblestoned cul-de-sac in which the entrance sits, the sense that it's been forgotten (on the day I visited only a security guard staying warm in his car was there), and the allegations that the parish church itself is haunted, combine to form the eerie uniqueness of the place. I fear these photos don't do it justice.
My grandmother’s brother Adam, the one she never knew, is buried in a section that must have been popular among poorer people. I so surmise because, in a pretty large area, there are only two or three grave markers. Using one in the same row as Adam as a reference, I found the spot where he is buried, unmarked. I left a pile of pebbles and a tall stick, which the security guy told me might be taken out by a lawnmower in the spring. Doesn’t matter. I know the spot.
My great-uncle Adam is buried at the right end of this red line segment. The eagle-eyed will see the red hexagon around where I marked the spot with a stick.
The section behind Adam's has many more grave markers
Another vista of the cemetery; from this angle it's almost hard to tell the monuments are not made of stone
I don’t think anyone from our family’s been there in more than 80 years. Maybe even the 100 years since Adam was born and died. My grandmother had the letter with the grave location in her house, but apparently didn’t know it. She always said she had no idea where Adam was buried and it bothered her too. In her name and her parents’ name as well, it was good for me to go there.
I remember that President Kennedy’s son Patrick (born in August 1963, 50 years after Adam) died fifty years ago today, also soon after being born. He was buried in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. These days President Kennedy’s parents and a fair number of the family are at rest in the same plot there, but in 1963 they were all living. Patrick was the only person buried at Holyhood. President Kennedy visited the grave one night in the fall of 1963 and said, “He seems so alone here.” When President Kennedy was killed in November, Patrick’s body was moved to Arlington to be near him.
Visiting Most Holy Trinity I had similar thoughts about Adam, but there doesn’t seem to be any feasible way to move him closer to other relatives. All the family plots in New York are full. I find some comfort in thinking that he’s had nearly a century to get accustomed to a very unique place, and we now know where to find him.
So, open thread... Let's hear about the most unique cemeteries you've come across, or anything else that strikes your fancy.
Tue Apr 14, 2015 at 9:16 PM PT (Anonymous Coward): thank you for share!
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