Jesse Zarr: A Chestnut Ridge Connection in St. Mark's Cemetery?

In my most recent posts, I've shared excerpts from Glenette Forgea's scrapbook about the lost hamlet of Chestnut Ridge. The tiny community consisted of a handful of houses along Chestnut Ridge Road, formerly known as Shoemaker's Road due to the large number of shoemakers among its residents. As Mrs. Forgea writes, Chestnut Ridge had its own Methodist church, a schoolhouse, and two cemeteries: the Byram Lake Cemetery and the Zar (or Zarr) Cemetery. The earliest inscribed gravestone in the Zar Cemetery is that of Parker Zar, a German immigrant who was born in 1765 and was one of the first white settlers of the area. As I was reading about the Zars of Chestnut Ridge, my mind flashed to Jesse Zarr, the one person in St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery of that surname. Was there any connection between them?

Jesse Zarr's gravestone is a military-issue marble marker, one of several in the cemetery. There are no dates, only his name and the name of his regiment: the 23rd New York Volunteer Infantry. This was a Civil War regiment that was organized at Elmira, New York, in May 1861, and mustered in for service two months later. According to the regiment's roster, Jesse Zarr was 23 years old when he enlisted on May 6, 1861 for a term of two years. He was mustered out May 22, 1863, at Elmira.

What was a Westchester County boy like Jesse Zarr doing in Elmira, more than 200 miles away from the cemetery in which he would be buried? I don't know, but this is definitely the same Jesse Zarr. In 1906, he applied for a pension from the government, and in 1907 his widow Sarah Zarr filed for a widow's pension. Twenty years earlier, Jesse and Sarah had lived together in Pound Ridge, Westchester County, with their three-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Though they were not in Chestnut Ridge, Jesse was a shoemaker.

1880 US Federal Census

In 1900, the couple was still living in Pound Ridge. The number ones in Sarah's row indicate that she was the mother of one child, and that that one child was living.

1900 US Federal Census

Trying to determine why Jesse Zarr might have been in Elmira at the time of the Civil War, I went back to the census of 1860. In that year, at age 22, he was living in Elmira with a young couple, William and Caroline Shesler. There is, in fact, a tenuous connection to that name through the cemetery, in the form of Ann Cronk, a young woman buried in the Methodist portion of the cemetery who was married to George Schesler. This may, however, be a coincidence.

Jesse Zarr must have died before 1907, when his wife filed for a widow's pension. In 1910, 57-year-old Sarah Zarr was living on her own in Ossining. In 1920, she was living in Manhattan with her daughter Elizabeth "Bessie" Zarr Jacoby; Bessie's husband Henry, a German immigrant who worked as a plumber; and Elizabeth's son Edward Schnell, who was Henry's stepson.

1920 US Federal Census

As I have not yet been able to identify Jesse Zarr's parents, or anything about him prior to the 1860s, I can't say for sure whether he had any origins in Chestnut Ridge, but it seems plausible. The question of why he was buried in the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery remains. Perhaps he and his wife were Episcopalians (the only church in Chestnut Ridge was Methodist)? Perhaps he was moved from the Byram Lake Cemetery when it was dismantled in the early 20th century, or from the Zar Cemetery after Chestnut Ridge was abandoned?