Historians often say that they work on the stories of our past because “people’s lives matter” and their lessons should not be forgotten. I was privileged to stand among many of those lives and work on a few of those stories this past Saturday in Newburgh’s Old Town Cemetery.
Old Town is the name of our original community space, where, in 1709, the Palatine refugees who settled north of the Quassaick Creek walked uphill from the river and established a gathering place. Cutting down trees, they built a log community house that would serve as their meeting headquarters and as their little Lutheran church. There, they gave thanks for their deliverance from war and genocide, they made plans together and developed a structure to govern themselves in what was wilderness.
Today, Old Town is not mapped as a settlement but remains delineated as the cemetery created in the heart of that settlement where Newburgh’s early citizens buried their dead. History books repeat that the first burial was made there, near the little log church, in 1713. The site of the old church has been marked by iron posts and a stone and bronze plaque, to remind visitors that they have reached the core of old Newburgh.
Last weekend, sixteen volunteers came to Old Town Cemetery to clean gravestones. Participation was restricted so that we could all spread out and abide by COVID-19 distancing guidelines. Expert gravestone restorers, Tina and Dale Utter from Chenango, NY, gave us lessons in the correct way to touch and handle old stone markers. We tapped on them to listen for hollow spots that could indicate internal deterioration. We inspected them for cracks and flaws that might cause failure if we started to scrub their surfaces. We were taught to avoid the old brown sandstone markers because they are too soft after centuries to endure our brushing.
We watched as these experts demonstrated on a couple of old marble tombstones how to scrub and wash away decades of grime and growth on the surfaces. Then we set to work. A peace settled over the old burying ground as a fall breeze blew around us and people quietly walked back and forth to the spigot at Calvary Presbyterian Church, refilling their buckets and rinsing off their plastic brushes. Dale and Tina circulated inside the Grand Street fence and sprayed the stones with a solution of D-2, an environmentally safe cleaner, as each volunteer completed washing a stone.

Slowly, as moss and lichen and mildew rinsed away, words were revealed: names of families lost to time in our community story. Lists of children obviously lost in close proximity, perhaps to one of the many diseases that plagued 18th century residents, showed up in sad relief. Carved images were revealed: death heads, angel wings, weeping willow branches, baby lambs – the art carved by early stone masons. Bible verses and brief romantic verses were found again on the lower half of a few stones. Here and there, an epitaph revealed what the person had accomplished so many decades ago. “Ardent in the Cause of Liberty” said the gravestone of Samuel Belknap, reminding us that ancestors lay beneath that soil who first fought to establish the United States of America.
As some volunteers expressed last weekend, a cemetery is a time capsule to display whom we have been as a community and how much human endeavor has created a place for us. In 1898, the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands completed an inventory of all the tombstones then extant (many have since fallen or become eroded beyond recognition). Those late 19th century volunteers transcribed every word and date they could read at that time and their directory remains as a great resource for local history. Old Town is the heart of the Newburgh Glebe – the common lands set aside in the Palatines’ first compact, to provide for the support of all. Its story, and the stories of all 1,700 souls buried there, is our story and our roots.