City: Huntington
County: Suffolk
State: NY
Description
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Huntington's Old Burying Ground was the second public burial place in town (the first one, used from 1650s-1720s was located near the Presbyterian Church in what's now Hecksher Park. The earliest dated marker at Burying Ground Hill is from 1712. Early graves were marked by simple fieldstones or wooden markers. This site was chosen for use as a graveyard because it would not have been productive farmland.
During the last winter of the American Revolution, British troops, who had occupied Huntington since September 1776, erected a fort on the top of the burying ground from timbers removed from the Town's Presbyterian Church. Construction of the fort, known as Fort Golgotha, greatly enraged local residents and is the first recorded act of vandalism. At least one hundred tombstones were destroyed and others were used to build bake ovens. According to local legend, bread baked in these ovens bore the reverse inscriptions of the tombstones on the lower crust.
Forty-two veterans of the Revolution are buried here.
The graveyard contains some 1246 marked graves, although it is estimated that three to four times as many people are buried here. The yard includes tombstones carved from local fieldstones, sandstone, slate, marble and granite, as well as a zinc marker and three iron markers. The markers bear a wide variety of early decorative patterns, such as a winged death's head and the soul effigy, as well as representations of inscriptive styling typical to other historical periods. In addition to the historical and genealogical information contained on the markers, they are some of the earliest folk art to be found on the Island.
