The 2.8 acre cemetery has a complicated history of ownership that has contributed to its decline. Today it is owned by the estate of a former resident of Brooklyn, which provides no maintenance and is not currently selling cemetery plots. I write as one of a small group of local residents who is saddened by the current situation and hope that something can be done to remedy it. We have been meeting over the summer to exchange ideas and will hold a meeting on Sunday, October 21 at 3:00 pm at the Community Center to inform and involve the community in this issue. In the meantime, we suggest that you take the time to visit this peaceful, historic graveyard with its interesting old tombstones. Many of our former friends and neighbors now lie in this grassy refuge, including Mildred Rippey, Laura Ebmeyer, Faye Ellison, Winthrop Gilman, Nicholas Gesner and the famous Molly Sneden, who was given a new tombstone a few years ago.

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In the 18th century the Palisades Cemetery began as an eighth of an acre used to bury family members by the Lawrences, who lived in the Big House, the oldest house in Palisades. The oldest grave on record dates to 1774 and is that of Mary Lawrence, the wife of Jonathan Lawrence, the “Elder Senior.” Three years later her husband was buried nearby. Soon, however, others besides Lawrences were included. Of the eight oldest graves, up till 1797, two were of Concklins and one of a Gesner. Before Herbert Lawrence bought another eighth acre from George Mann in 1838, at least thirty-seven others had been buried in the “Lawrence Burying Ground,” only a few of them Lawrences. In the 19th century the graveyard grew gradually as the Manns and Lawrences sold adjacent lots to neighbors. In 1861 David Mann sold land around the cemetery to George M. Lawrence, the great-grandson of Jonathan Lawrence Sr., and for more than thirty years the deeds for plots were all granted by George M. Lawrence and his wife Maria. In 1892, after the death of George M. Lawrence, Samuel Brown bought some of the land from Maria Lawrence, and by 1912, when a surveyor made a map of the cemetery, Samuel Brown was listed as the owner of the whole thing, now called the Palisades Cemetery.

In the meantime, Palisades resident Ralph Doughty, probably at the suggestion of local historian Winthrop Gilman, made a list of the legible gravestones in the cemetery. This was bound with an introduction and index by Mr. Gilman in 1901. It is in the Palisades Library and is particularly valuable because many of the original stones, such as Mollie Sneden’s, have become illegible through natural weathering. After Sam Brown died, the property passed to his son George, and it was George Brown’s widow Helen who sold the cemetery to Karl Kirchner, a real estate broker in Tappan, in 1949. Now the management of the cemetery was out of the hands of villagers who had a personal interest in it, and had become an incomeproducing venture. Mr. Kirchner found that not many wanted graves — perhaps ten in the twelve years he kept it — because the cemetery is too small to offer perpetual care. In 1962 he sold it to a group of businessmen in Brooklyn. A “co-partnership” called the Palisades Company in Jamaica, L.I. owned the cemetery briefly, but in 1964 Adolfo F. Luca of Brooklyn bought it. While the 2.3 acre property was being sold and resold as a business venture, the individual plots were tended by the families concerned, because the recent owners had not provided money to maintain the cemetery. Luca died a few years ago; his daughter, an attorney practicing in NYC., appears to be the caretaker of the estate which includes the Palisades Cemetery.

Since the Lawrences, Snedens and Gesners in the oldest part of the cemetery had left the village, their graves were for a long time neglected and overgrown. In 1974 Archer and Helene Stansbury, who were related to many of the old families, came to the rescue and for many years gave the old graves tender loving care. In 1982 an organization was formed to take over some of the Stansbury’s responsibilities. About twenty plot owners agreed to make yearly contributions for the maintenance of the cemetery. The organization, called P.L.O.T. (for Palisades Lot Owners Tribute), is headed by former Palisades resident Lee Sneden. As the result of attrition, active and supportive membership has dropped and there is doubt about the future ability of P.L.O.T. to receive enough in contributions to maintain the property.

Although Luca’s daughter is neither providing money to maintain the cemetery nor selling plots, a few people have gone ahead anyway and buried their relatives there. This situation increases the confusion about plot boundaries. A survey of existing plots is sorely needed, as well as increased funding for future maintenance. Unless something changes, in a few years our historic Palisades Cemetery could become an overgrown wilderness of unknown graves. Please come to the meeting on October 21 and help us generate ideas that might remedy this sad situation.