Trinity Church: where New York's oldest dead lie

New York · United States · Church

Trinity Church: where New York's oldest dead lie — New York · United States · Church

Where New York's oldest dead finally have names, stones and preserved records. Alexander Hamilton rests here.

We end at Trinity Church, at Broadway and Wall Street, a parish whose origins go back to 1697. The present church, the third on the site, was completed in 1846 and was for a time the tallest building in New York. In the churchyard rest some of early America's best-known names, among them Alexander Hamilton and his wife Eliza, and the inventor Robert Fulton. The block was ravaged by the great fire of 1776 that laid waste to lower Manhattan during the Revolutionary War. Trinity still keeps records of its dead, so that names can be matched to stones.

It is a deliberate ending. After the anonymous of the African Burial Ground, the nameless of Five Points and the common ground, and the countless of the harbour, we come to a burial ground where the dead at last have names, stones and preserved records. Folklore speaks of figures among the leaning stones in the evening light and of a stillness that settles despite the nearness of Wall Street. But the point is not to frighten. The buried city ends in memory rather than fear: New York's oldest dead are not forgotten here, they are preserved.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Drawn on stone by John Forsyth & E. W. Mimee · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons