Volunteers, church work to restore St. George's Cemetery

Amy Vacchio is on a mission to save Hempstead’s historic St. George’s Cemetery.

Ever since she began working at Rock Hall Museum in Lawrence 23 years ago, her research about the families that lived in the Colonial mansion has pointed her to St. George’s Episcopal Church and its cemetery on Front Street.

Many of the most important figures in the history of Nassau County were members of the church and they were buried under it or on the grounds starting in 1724. They included members of the Martin and Hewlett families who occupied Rock Hall, built about 1767 and now run by the Town of Hempstead.

But Vacchio was continually frustrated by a lack of information about the cemetery’s graves — and their occupants — as well as the continuing disintegration of the gravestones in what she believes to be the oldest cemetery in the town.

Now, thanks to Vacchio’s persistence and the cooperation of a new rector at the church, a renaissance is underway at the burial ground across the street from Hempstead Town Hall.

Working with the Rev. Ajung Sojwal and Matt Longo, a part-time archivist at Rock Hall, Vacchio has established Friends of Historic St. George Cemetery — a kind of volunteer support group for the graveyard that has an ambitious agenda.

“The past two years have been devoted to research, creating a website and a new map of this historic cemetery,” explained Vacchio, recently named director at Rock Hall after the retirement of Linda Barreira.

The group created a website — historicstgeorgecemetery.org — that went live last month. The site includes a map created by Longo, a graduate student at the University at Buffalo.

Working on the project on her own time, Vacchio said, “I have arranged for the digitization of all church records, which is a historical treasure trove.” That project was done by the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at LIU Post with funding from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The archived documents, dating from 1725, are accessible at bit.ly/LIUpreservicaStGeorgesCemetery.

Multitude of tasks

Vacchio and Longo have been scouring the archives of the church, founded in 1702, to identify many of the 700 people believed to have been interred in the cemetery and to decipher where they were buried — a task made difficult because of gravestones that are missing or severely damaged.

Longo used the information they have gathered to update a map prepared by Boy Scouts in the 1930s. The updated map appears on the website, and paper copies will be distributed at a bicentennial ceremony at the church on June 11 that will include Revolutionary War re-enactors (see box). That’s fitting because St. George’s is the final resting place of several veterans of the American Revolution, from both sides. An outdoor map exhibit, to be created when funds are available, will show each gravestone identified so far and include a QR code that links to a reference on the website.

After the outdoor map, Vacchio said the next stage of the project will be cleaning the headstones and repairing damaged ones while continuing to research the people buried in the cemetery.

The interior of St. George's Episcopal Church in Hempstead; archivist Matt Longo with a British flag at the church; and a 1902 photo of the church. | Photos by Linda Rosier

She has filed for nonprofit status for the friends group to make it eligible to apply for grants and accept tax-exempt contributions. In the meantime, her immediate priorities are raising $3,000 to pay for the outdoor map — about $400 has been raised so far — and finding volunteers to help with cleanups and archival research.

A physical turnaround at the cemetery began last fall when Northwell Health employees helped clean up the property.

That followed an email from Bernard Robinson, director of emergency medical service operations. “Our department is very active in the community,” he wrote to Sojwal. “One of our programs is dedicated to cleaning up and revitalizing parks and public spaces.” He told Sojwal that two paramedics wanted to the bring the program to St. George’s because of their awareness of “the rich history of the church and the burial sites on the land.”

Twenty volunteers spent eight hours one day in December removing trash and overgrown vegetation, he said. “We’re pleased that that was the start of something much bigger. We’d like to see it restored; this is awesome,” Robinson told Newsday.

The Northwell help was welcomed by Sojwal, who said the church has a landscaping company that tends the cemetery as well as parishioners who periodically pick up and clear garbage.

The Northwell cleanup also made it easier for Vacchio and Longo to see the foundations of missing tombstones they had read about in the archives.

Getting access to the archives had proved to be a major task in itself.

“For the past few decades, it has been hard to research, or find new information about those interred or even speak with a church representative,” said Vacchio, also a trustee of the Valley Stream Historical Society. That changed, she explained, when she learned of Sojwal’s arrival in March 2019 from Stonington, Connecticut.

Vacchio emailed Sojwal, then reached out to people who knew her.

“The proposal for the restoration of the St. George's church cemetery was brought to my attention by one of my clergy colleagues, the Rev. J. Christopher Ballard, rector of Trinity-St. John's Church in Hewlett who connected me to Amy Vacchio,” Sojwal explained. “It was largely due to the historical information shared with me by Ms. Vacchio about the important people/families of Long Island who were parishioners of St. George's and buried in our church cemetery that I realized what an important project the restoration would be.

“We get many inquiries from people who are trying to locate their ancestors in the church records, and I am glad that this project has led to digitizing the historical documents for such information to be available easily online.”

Before Sojwal gave Vacchio access to church archives, she said: “I was always told that the cemetery records were lost and there was no record of who was buried there, or at least where they were interred.”

But when Vacchio talked to Sojwal, the response was: “What do you need?”

“For years I have watched the stones deteriorate and thought if I don’t do something we will lose this important historical and cultural resource,” Vacchio said. “I have made it my mission to correct this.”

What turned that vague sense of a mission into a plan of action was more research. Three years ago, Vacchio wrote a paper about Alice Bannister McNeill, an accomplished artist and musician who was the last surviving member of the Martin family to live in its Rock Hall home. She was buried at St. George’s in 1806.

“That was the catalyst for this project,” she said. “I ended up cleaning her gravestone because it was so dirty.”

Vacchio realized that to do more she would need help, and that was the seed for the friends organization.

When told about the group’s plans, Hempstead Village historian Reine Bethany, a member of the church since 2017 who has done her own research on its history, said, “It’s the most amazing and delightful news I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a boon to the village and not just the church.”

Storied history

After St. George’s Church was chartered by the Church of England in 1702, the congregation worshipped in a small dwelling. The first church on the site was dedicated in 1735 — 11 years after the first burial in the cemetery. After the first church was destroyed by fire, it was replaced by the current edifice 200 years ago. The nearby rectory was built in 1793 and designed by the same architect, Gerardus Clowes, who designed Rock Hall.

“St. George’s is not only important to the history of Hempstead but for Nassau County and Long Island,” Vacchio said. “You have the history of the American Revolution and the Anglican Church being controlled by the English Crown, and then it becomes an Episcopalian parish and church and broke away from the Crown. This was the primary meeting place. It was used by British soldiers at one point during the occupation of Long Island in the American Revolution; the Hessian soldiers shot up the weather vane,” still atop the steeple.

“This is a primary source for the history of Long Island — the records of the baptisms and burials,” she said.

“The first burial took place in 1724, according to the records,” Vacchio said. It was for the church’s first minister, John Thomas, whose gravestone is among those that are missing.

The oldest surviving gravestone, from 1738, is that of Sarah Jenney, wife of a subsequent rector, Robert Jenney.

Vacchio and Longo still don’t know how many graves are missing markers. That will require more research in the church records. Graves were moved when the original church burned and when property was taken to expand Front Street. None of those relocations was documented.

There are two surviving gravestones for Martin family members — Alice Bannister McNeill and her husband, William McNeill, who died at Rock Hall in 1823 and in 1846 in Hempstead, respectively — although more were buried there. Josiah Martin, the original owner of Rock Hall, his wife and children were buried at St. George’s (see box).

“They were originally buried under the altar in the church,” Vacchio said. “And when the church burned down, the bodies were moved. We have our theory where they were moved to, but the tombstones no longer survive.”

The Martins are believed to be in the cemetery’s oldest section, in the southwest corner of the property closest to Front Street.

No information about the burial of enslaved people has been found, although there are records of sacraments. It’s likely that those enslaved by the Martin family at Rock Hall and other wealthy landowners would have been buried on their own properties.

Sojwal said that members of the church had been involved in the slave trade and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has arranged for a historian to research that subject.

One stone at a time          

Restoring, stabilizing and repairing the old gravestones will be a major undertaking estimated to cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the stone has spalled off the front of older headstones, eliminating any of the inscription.

“And once it flakes, it can’t be restored,” Vacchio said.

And rehabilitating the headstones that can be saved can require specialized professional skills — especially when they have broken or sunken into the ground. Vacchio plans to start small, aiming to raise about $10,000 to begin cleaning gravestones.

The organizers are planning community cleanup days to make it easier to restore damaged headstones.

The cleaning of the gravestones themselves will have to be done by experts or under expert guidance to avoid damaging the fragile markers, Sojwal said. The specialized solution that can kill biological growth on tombstones without damaging them costs hundreds of dollars, she explained.

To achieve their ambitious goals, Vacchio and Sojwal are seeking volunteers interested in doing genealogical and archival research and participating in cleanups. Those interested can sign up through the website, historicstgeorgecemetery.org.

Sojwal said the project is important “so I can understand the church’s life from one generation to another.

“Today we have an almost all-Black congregation, and it started out as a very white church,” she said. “Blacks were not allowed to worship here. That narrative is interesting to me.”

Vacchio agreed. “There is just so much history here to be told. And it’s a fabulous history. It’s every prominent family you can find on Long Island: When you walk around you can see the names from streets like Bedell, Mott, Seaman, Woodhull, Eldridge. Every family has a story. It’s just part of the larger picture of Long Island history. I just felt that if we don’t do something, we’re going to lose it.”

Prominent graves at St. George’s Cemetery

Martin, Hewlett, Seabury, Carman and Van Wyck are among the early prominent families represented at St. George’s Cemetery.

The biggest monument is for four bachelor brothers — Samuel, Epenetus, Abraham and David — of the Wood family who ran a liquor distribution company in Brooklyn. They made a pact to remain unmarried and leave their estates to the last surviving brother, thus keeping the wealth in the family. Samuel, the surviving heir, purchased farmland after the Civil War to create Woodsburgh. Woodmere is also named for the family.

Josiah (1699-1778) and Mary Martin (died 1805) are buried in St. George’s. Josiah, one of the leading English planters on the island of Antigua, built Rock Hall in 1767 in present-day Lawrence.

Lt. Col. Richard Hewlett (1729-1789) served with DeLancey’s Loyalist Brigade during the Revolutionary War and led British Forces during the Battle of Setauket.

Thomas Hewlett (1793-1841) acquired Rock Hall in 1824. He opened the home to paying guests as early as 1828.

William Laing (1831-1864) was a sergeant in the 158th New York Infantry in the Civil War. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for being among the first to scale the parapet during the Battle of Chaffin's Farm in Virginia where he died in battle on Sept. 29, 1864.

The last burial was in 2016; church clergy are the only people who may still be buried in the cemetery.

Visit the church

St. George’s Episcopal Church, at 319 Front St., Hempstead, plans to celebrate the bicentennial of its building at 1 p.m. on June 11. The event will include Revolutionary War re-enactors, and paper copies of the new cemetery maps will also be available. To get involved in the effort to restore the cemetery, visit historicstgeorgecemetery.org.

Top image: Amy Vacchio, the Rev. Ajung Sojwal and Matt Longo outside St. George's Episcopal Church in May 2022.