Cemeteries of Staten Island
Welcome to "Cemeteries of Staten Island"
Richard Simpson is a promotor of local history. History is all around us and it's up to people like me to promote it. Simpson sponsors lectures, events, and walking tours, where anyone can come in, sit down and learn about local history.
Simpson has made Moravian Cemetery famous for its walking tours. He now invites you to join him on tours of "Cemeteries of Staten Island."
"More and more people are becoming interested in local history." Simpson says, "there's no better place to learn about history than taking a stroll through a cemetery where you see the names of those who made history. There are those who are written about in history books, and there are those that history has overlooked. Simpson says "it's up to him to keep their memory alive by telling their stories." His tours feature biographical information combined with historical facts.
If you have a question or a story about any cemetery in Staten Island, or anyone resting in a cemetery on Staten Island and would like to share it with us, please contact us.
Send us your name to be included for upcoming events, tours, programs, etc., please e-mail us at: csiny@mindspring.com
For Moravian Cemetery please visit us at www.moraviancemeterytours.com
or
Starting this fall (2008) Simpson will take you on walking tours of "Cemeteries of Staten Island."
We'll visit St. Andrew's Cemetery (founded 1708) who celebrates their 300th Anniversary in 2008. Families resting here include LaTourette, Crocheron, Holmes, Martineau, Garretson, Poillion, Britton, Seguine, DeGroot, Winant, Henderson, and many, many more families.
The Village of Richmond, now known as Richmondtown, was the county seat of Staten Island from 1710 to 1898. From its earliest settlement in the late 1660s, it was a community of people with diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds - the Dutch, English and French settled there.
The village is located at the crossroads of routes leading to all areas of the island. It was also reached by the Fresh Kills Creek for those coming from New Jersey. During the eighteenth century Richmondtown served as both a production and a distribution center. Products and produce passed through Richmondtown, moving between markets in New York and neighboring Perth Amboy and Elizabeth, which lie across the Arthur Kill opposite Staten Island.
Artifacts unearthed from excavations in Richmondtown confirm this New Jersey-Staten Island and Richmondtown-New York trade network. And more to the point, this trade network is reflected in the gravestones that appear in St. Andrew’s Cemetery and cemeteries in Manhattan. Both communities had access to the stone carving workshops of Manhattan and New Jersey.
St. Andrew's Cemetery, surrounding an Anglican church built in 1709, is located at the northwestern corner of the village on a gently sloping rise. The earliest surveyed stone, a brownstone with a death's-head motif, dates to 1742.
Of the 229 family surnames found on both Colonial and Victorian stones, about one-third belong to old Staten Island families. Many Dutch and French surnamed individuals were buried along with the English, although all of the gravestones were written in English. Only 74 readable brownstones survive from the Colonial and Federal periods (up to 1815).
See you at the cemetery!!
