Resting in Peace and Beauty: A Visit to Troy’s Oakwood Cemetery
I don't find park cemeteries scary or depressing. They are quite beautiful.
Whether you have a family plot where you’ll lie with the ancestors, or you don’t want a monument and wish to have your ashes scattered at sea, at some point, we all must think about where we want to rest after our race is run. This isn’t just a morbid post about death, this piece is about both death and places of great beauty and peace. Yep, we’re going to the cemetery. But not just any cemetery.
Before the late 1830s, there were graveyards, but no modern cemeteries as we know them today. Prior to that time, most people were interred in churchyards or in family burial grounds. Townspeople were often buried in municipal graveyards. Enslaved people, the poor and indigent were buried in less holy ground, often unmarked, and further away from habitation. But as towns and cities grew, the dead began outnumbering the living. Some graveyards were so crowded that coffins were being stacked on top of each other. There were documented cases in some places of flooding, exposing bodies which were falling out of open coffins. The horror, not to mention threat of disease, was increasing.
Officials realized town burials could no longer continue. Besides, large graveyards were taking up valuable real estate. Something different had to be done. Laws were passed prohibiting in-town burials. Most municipalities as well as religious groups established graveyards on the outskirts of towns, preferably on higher ground. Hundreds of graves were moved and arranged in neat rows on land purchased by the town or group. In a city like New York, even those soon filled up. Cholera and typhoid epidemics, childbirth and infant mortality and just a shortened life span in general soon filled up many urban sites. Calvary Cemetery in Queens is a classic example. As you can see below, this place is PACKED.
In 1831, a group of Bostonians came up with a unique burial solution. The Boston Horticultural Society purchased 72 acres of woodland near Cambridge and the Charles River and established the first rural cemetery in the United States. Mount Auburn Cemetery became a unique combination of burial ground and park. Here, the dead could be buried in a peaceful park setting, with landscaped pathways, gardens, trees and shrubbery. If one wanted to rest underneath a tree, one could buy a plot that would make that possible. The graves and markers would be planned, but tucked in almost anywhere, and a chapel would be a central place for a service or memorial gathering.
Mount Auburn was a success, and the model for every park cemetery that followed, including Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and Oakwood Cemetery in Troy. The cemeteries were all very popular wherever they were with all income groups. Even if one couldn’t afford a family plot, or a large memorial, the cemetery was still a beautiful place to get out of the city, pack a picnic, visit your loved ones and make a day of it.
Many people today might think that picnicking in a cemetery is grotesque or strange, but the Victorian mindset about death and after-death was different from our own. While we do everything we can to stave off death, the Victorians knew that death was always around the corner for rich and poor alike, so they made their peace with the inevitability and devised societal norms to deal with it.
In the 19th century, there were undertakers, but not the full-service funeral parlors we have today. When you died, no matter your income or status, you were dressed in your best, laid out in a simple coffin in your home, where the wake and funeral were held. Then the undertakers took the coffin to the cemetery for the burial. Very few people had funerals outside of their homes.
It was not uncommon to visit your loved ones at the cemetery and spend time with them. Many of us still do it. The natural progression of that would be to establish a beautiful setting, out of the city, away from industry and noise, and a place of cooling breezes and peaceful tranquility, with natural beauty all around.
As the popularity of park cemeteries grew, they could also be a place to arrange some subtle matchmaking. Those who wanted certain parties to meet and marry would plan visits at the same time so that the objects of the match were also there. The widowed and the widower or an unattached but dutiful family member could “accidentally” meet one another. How fortuitous! How many today would tell friends, “We met in the cemetery?”
Troy’s Oakwood Cemetery was founded in 1848 by six prominent Troy men, some of whose last names are familiar in the city’s history: Vaile, Paine, Winne, Tibbets, McConihe and Warren. They visited Mt. Auburn and did their research and then pooled their money and bought 300 acres on the hill above the city to establish a not-for-profit park cemetery.
To their great credit, their cemetery was established as non-sectarian and was not segregated in any way. There was no “poor section,” they didn’t establish the “colored section” or the Catholic or Jewish section. One could be of any race, or religion, or have no religion at all. Everyone was mixed in with everyone else. Society may have segregated people in life, but in death, Oakwood did not.
Oakwood was initially designed by John. C. Sidney, a Philadelphia landscape architect living in Albany. He laid out the original landscape, the roads, man-made ponds and more. But the first superintendent Robert Fergusson was said to have been haphazard in laying out the plots. Later planners would have to clean it up and establish order.
The cemetery opened in 1850, although some of the graves and markers date before then. In 1869, Troy bought the property in the middle of the city that held the 3rd Street Burying Ground, with plans to build a City Hall. (Site of Barker Park today.) 146 graves, holding many of Troy’s earliest residents, were removed to Oakwood. So too were others from other cemeteries and churchyards. Their headstones came with them, and they joined later family members and townsfolk.
Oakwood isn’t Troy’s oldest cemetery, Old Mount Ida’s Cemetery is older (1832), Trinity Church’s graveyard in Lansingburgh dates back even earlier (1807), and Lansingburgh’s Village Burial Ground is older still. (1771) But it is the largest and the only park cemetery within the city limits. Like all such cemeteries, Oakwood has a vault to hold coffins not yet buried, mostly because of winter weather. And it has a chapel. A very special and beautiful chapel that will get its own post next time, because there is so much to say about this magnificent building.
This piece is about the rest of the cemetery.
If you think about it, park cemeteries are huge sculpture galleries. As one wanders up and down and around the roads through the park, you can’t help but notice the beauty in stone around you. I don’t think of Oakwood as morbid or depressing, I see the stones, the monuments and mausoleums as art, some of it sculpted by well-known artists of the day. Many are beautiful, thought-provoking, and testaments to the art of sculpture and stone carving. They can also say a lot about the person or family they belong to.
When a family member approached the stone carver, there were many things to consider beyond price. A design, whether customized or from a catalog had to be created or chosen. The designer had to use the location of the plot to best advantage, they had to take consideration of the life of the deceased. What was important to him or her, or the family – it could be piety, a fancy show of wealth, or represent that person’s humility and desire to not stand out, neither in life or death. A monument to that person’s life, or their family across generations was a portrait in stone, expertly executed by master stone carvers.
Oakwood has a large collection of Celtic crosses scattered throughout the cemetery. They all display the intricate knot patterns and shape that define the style, and range in height and size. Some belong to well-known Trojans, others are monuments to those less remembered today. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are so many of these crosses, Celtic peoples, specifically the Irish, play a huge part in the history of the city.
One may need a place to sit and rest, so many park cemeteries, including Oakwood, have monuments that invite the family or a visitor to have a seat. A stranger resting may read the name and date on the stone, and perhaps remember the family and bless them for their kindness. The seats range from a simple stone bench to a huge piece of work like that of the Giles memorial in the middle of the cemetery.
Like most cemeteries of this kind and time period, Oakwood has a fine collection of mausoleums (mausolea, to be more grammatical) and burial vaults, 24 of them. These stone buildings are usually designed to house entire families, often for generations to come. Some are rather plain and utilitarian, others are monumental, often striking in appearance and size. They were built out of limestone, marble, granite and brownstone. Many are free-standing, others are recessed, tomb-like, into the side of an embankment.
There was a lot of money in Troy during the Gilded Age, and that is when most of the most elaborate memorials were built. I could do an entire post just talking about the mausolea and will probably do that at some point in the future. Suffice it to say, there are some impressive and beautiful structures in the cemetery. The Warren chapel, the Tracy and Paine memorials, the Vail vault and the final resting place of Russell Sage, and the unique Burden family resting place, to name just a few. They all deserve more than just a mention. The people inside were all important citizens of Troy and shaped the city we see today, and they are fine examples of art and architecture, as well.
There are many more interesting and important people buried here. Most of the 19th and early 20th century presidents of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are here, as is educator Emma Willard, whose Troy school for women is still going strong. Hannah Lord Montague, the inventor of the detachable collar, which made fortunes for many others here interred, is also here, as is Caroline Gilkey Rogers, an important figure in New York State’s Women’s Suffrage movement.
There are quite a few Civil War era soldiers here in Oakwood. General George Thomas, known as the “Rock of Chickamauga” for his refusal to retreat from battle has a large monument. When he died in 1870, President Grant wanted him buried in Arlington, but his wife wanted him here at home in the family plot in Troy. That was quite a battle in of itself. Grant and his cabinet and over 10,000 people attended his burial, but his wife sat out in protest.
Another Civil War veteran who stands out is John Wool. He was an army officer for three wars – the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. He was the oldest general in the Union Army during the Civil War and was the de facto military commander of New York City. He led his troops to quell the Draft Riots of 1863. When he died in 1869 at the age of 85, his family had him interred at Oakwood and raised the tallest obelisk in the cemetery in his honor.
It is 65 feet tall, with a ten-foot base. The obelisk was carved from one piece of granite, which was quarried and cut in Maine, journeyed by boat to NYC, taken up the Hudson River to Troy, then rolled on rollers up Hoosick Street and then to the cemetery. Raising it onto its base was no easy task. There’s another great story there!
More contemporary residents rest in Oakwood such as Livingston Houston who died in 1977. He was one of the most influential presidents RPI ever had, growing the campus and bringing athletics to the school. The Houston Field House is named after him. Also here is major league baseball player Billy “Flash” Harrell, a Siena College graduate who began his baseball career in the Negro Leagues and went on to play for the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox. He died in 2014.
The cemetery’s most famous resident is “Uncle” Sam Wilson, whose grave was moved here from Mt. Ida Cemetery. His marker is hard to find, even following the signs, in part because it isn’t a huge monument, as his fame as the symbol of America didn’t happen until long after he was dead. If a large flagpole, an American flag and a later larger monument didn’t also mark the spot, it would easily be missed.
Wilson, a congenial local figure in Troy in his day, already had the nickname Uncle Sam, when his meatpacking business during the War of 1812 made him a local legend. Barrels of meat with his initials “US” became synonymous with the United States. Cartoonist Thomas Nast created the top-hatted red, white, and blue clad character in the 1870s, refining it over the years to the image we know today. Many people come to Oakwood just to see his grave, which is great for the cemetery and for Troy.
Traveling around in the cemetery brings a visitor to several vistas and water features that make Oakwood so beautiful. Since Oakwood is high on an escarpment above the northern part of the city, above the Lansingburgh neighborhood, the view is spectacular. Both the view from the Earl Chapel and a dedicated overlook further north in the cemetery, one can see all the way south to Albany and the Helderberg Escarpment to the south, south and downtown Troy, on up through Lansingburgh, and across the Hudson and the Mohawk rivers to Cohoes Falls and Harmony Mills, and farther north to the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains, a hundred miles of land, representing thousands of years of natural and American history.
Several natural streams flowed through the land when the men of Troy purchased it. Dams were built and the water was landscaped into four ponds. Some are in better shape than others today, but all have a singular beauty that adds to the peace of the park. Since the cemetery sits so high on the hill, some of the water spills down a small waterfall into a lush and deep wooded gorge. The various species of trees, some flowering, as well as flowers and shrubs throughout the park add to the natural beauty of the site.
This beauty had to be planned, as did the size and placement of the various family and individual plots. One of the cemetery’s most important planners also calls it his family’s home. Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African American to graduate from RPI worked for Oakwood for over 30 years, laying out new sections of the growing cemetery, adding new roads and using the topography of the land to plan the best places for the plots and for plantings. His hand-drafted and signed survey maps are among the cemetery’s most prized documents.
Baltimore, his parents, siblings and wife all share the family plot. His importance to Oakwood and to Troy’s history are noted on special markers at the sight. They lie with the rich and not so rich, the indigent, factory workers and factory owners, those who died in the nation’s many wars, and those who contributed to the city in all the myriad ways possible.
Oakwood is nowhere near full. The cemetery, with over 60,000 graves has enough land and room to take new residents for another hundred years. I highly recommend a visit. It’s not a depressing or scary place, at least not for me. This quiet city of the dead is alive with history, art and natural beauty. If this becomes my forever home, I couldn’t wish for a better place. I’ll be writing more about the cemetery and its residents in the future. Oakwood has many more stories to tell.
Thank you for this! I've never had the chance to personally visit Oakwood as I live far away, but I've spent an enormous amount of time documenting my second great-grandfather buried there in my family's Galbraith plot (T-77): Civil War vet, US Marine Guard and Troy iron stove design patent-holder, Robert Galbraith (b. Convoy, County Donegal, Ireland in 1840). I can't say enough about how helpful and supportive Oakwood's volunteers are to this cemetery. Your article makes me want to visit it even more.
Beatifully written and researched, as usual. Growing up in Troy, I was fortunate that my famiy lived close to the Lansingburgh entrance, at 101st Street, so Oakwood was my playground - full of nature and history. A beautiful part of a lucky childhood.