Croton Valley Friends Meeting

The Croton Valley Friends Meeting was established in 1804 as a preparative meeting of the Chappaqua Monthly Meeting. You may know the Society of Friends by the more well-known name of Quakers. "Quakers" was originally a word used to describe Friends by outsiders (referring to the way that Friends were said to "quake" with the spirit of God during their meetings) but is used by many Friends to refer to themselves today.

In 1827, the Society of Friends experienced a schism - the "Great Separation" - that split the Croton Valley Meeting into Orthodox and Hicksite groups. The present Croton Valley Meeting developed out of the Orthodox group, becoming its own Monthly Meeting in 1954.

You are looking at the third Croton Valley meetinghouse, built in 1902. The first and second were sold to make way for the Croton Dam. Although the first meetinghouse was completely inundated by the dam, I learned that the second, built in the 1850s, was located on the edge of the water, so that you can still see the foundations if you go down into the woods to look for them.


These last two pictures show some of the landscape along Meetinghouse Road, in between the home of the Haines family and that of Helena Rutherfurd Meade. It's probably one of the most beautiful places in the area.

A Quaker Cemetery

There is significant overlap in the surnames of the Episcopal Cemetery and the nearby, contemporary Quaker cemetery. To begin with, there are plenty of Sarleses in both. It's a reasonable guess that many of the Episcopalians and Quakers who shared surnames were actually relatives, perhaps even close relatives. Certainly, some of the people buried in the Episcopal Cemetery were Quakers, had been Quakers, or came from Quaker families, such as Charles Haight and Phebe Chase Greene.

Thorn seems to be a very common name in the Quaker cemetery, although I don't know whether there is any relation to Stephen Thorn (my guess: probably).



Coincidentally, Rose is also a very common name in the cemetery. Below you can see one of the very rare examples of decoration on the stones (the fact that I took so many pictures of the decorated stones makes the decoration seem less rare than it really is). The graves of Walton and Phebe Rose are engraved with their initials: WR and PUR. 

While the grave of Grace and Oscar Rose is marked with a Masonic symbol.

As you can see, the cemetery is quite overgrown, with some stones stranded in a sea of brush and debris. While this isn't good for the preservation of the stones, there's a certain beauty to the overgrowth. In some places, it's wild and lovely, with a fairy-tale sort of feel. It also serves as a physical manifestation of time.



Full disclosure: I came to this cemetery a lot when I was a child. You might say it was my first cemetery. So the landscape brings me back to that time when I was genuinely afraid of getting lost if I wandered too far out into what looked to me like a wilderness.



Still, the cemetery could probably use some work. Graves have been tossed around by this mutilated tree ...

... and many stones would benefit from a good cleaning.

Here you can see a child's grave that seems to match two child's graves in the Episcopal Cemetery: this one of John Howard and this one of George Henry and Lewis Seaman. It stands to reason that the Episcopalians and the Quakers would have bought gravestones from the same workshops.

On the other hand, the Quakers certainly did prefer their stones to be plainer, in general, than the Episcopalians did. During my brief time at the cemetery, I didn't see a single urn or willow, the hallmarks of mid-nineteenth-century gravestone decoration. I did see the rare ornamental flourish, such as the examples above and below:

I also didn't see any old sandstone graves with cherub faces, despite the fact that the Meeting dates back to the eighteenth century. I assume the reason is either 1) I missed them or 2) the Quakers weren't using gravestones at this time. Many eighteenth-century Quakers didn't use gravestones out of the belief that they were ostentatious. Others used extremely plain or blank stone markers. Some Quaker Meetings that had gravestones had them removed in the course of the eighteenth century.

These stones seemed to date from the mid-nineteenth century up to the present, with the best preserved stones being the granite markers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some stones were inscribed with the months in their Quaker form - that is, First Month instead of January.

Below are the stones that most fascinated me as a child. I thought they were doors that you could open into the underworld. It turns out I wasn't far off. I don't know what these stones are about - are they the lids of stone tombs that go down into the earth, or are they just markers placed on top of the earth? - but the basic visual and symbolic idea underlying the gravestone is that of a door. That is why some gravestones - mostly early ones like this - have architectural features like those you might find on a door (i.e., lunettes or tympanums).


While most of the gravestones are plain and undecorated, quite a few are massive. Take a look at this row of Sarleses, lined up right along the brim of the hill. They're quite impressive.



More Sarleses, of the same time period:

And here are some Underhills. That stone wall in the background could easily be as old as the cemetery itself.

Like the Episcopal cemetery, the Quaker cemetery has had some repairs done, but probably not recently. Broken stones have been fixed, and old stones have been placed on new bases.

Unlike the Episcopal cemetery, the Quaker cemetery is spread out. There are large open spaces in between the clusters of graves. In some places, the ground is level, and in other places it slopes dramatically. There are a lot of trees, a lot of weeds, and a lot to discover.

Lastly, here are the beautiful graves of the Quinbys and the Purdys, which are nestled into the roots of a tree. They're from the 1920s or '30s. The latest grave I saw today dated from 2009.

3: Gilbert Marten

Grave of Gilbert Marten

Gilbert Marten is the longest-lived person buried in the cemetery.* When he died on June 16, 1854, he was 90 years, six months, and eighteen days old. His headstone is notable for its plainness; it's almost unfinished looking, but handsome and well-preserved. Its simplicity made me wonder if Gilbert was a Quaker (there are a handful buried in the cemetery, including Enoch Greene's wife Phebe).

The 1800 census only records the names of householders, while simply enumerating the other members of the household. From this record I know that 36-year-old Gilbert Marten, resident in the same town he was buried in, was living in a household with six white males and four white females (two over the age of 25, presumably Gilbert and his wife) and five slaves. Yes, slaves! Slavery wasn't abolished in New York State until 1827.

Although some Quakers did own slaves in the early Colonial Era, Quakers soon became fiercely anti-slavery and were prominent abolitionists - so I think it's pretty safe to say that Gilbert Marten was not a Quaker.** Of the other households listed on the census page with Gilbert Marten's, only one other household had slaves (and only one slave). I wonder what Gilbert's neighbors, many of whom would have been Quakers, thought of him. 

1800 US Federal Census

Fifty years later, Gilbert was living with John Matthews, age 20; George Matthews, age 16; and Mary Baum, age 18. What was his relation to them? Notably, Gilbert is the only one whose "value of property" is recorded. His property is valued at $10,000 (something like $260,000 today). Perhaps the three young people worked for him?

1850 US Federal Census

I haven't been able to determine if Gilbert Marten was related to the seven Martins buried in the cemetery. Nor have I been able to identify his wife or children (as mentioned, they are enumerated, but not named, in the census). I probably could if I did more in-depth research, like actually looking up the old Episcopalian records; I'll likely do this at some point, but after I've accumulated information on a lot more other people buried in the cemetery. For now, I can say with some certainty that Gilbert Marten was at one time probably one of the oldest and richest members of this community.


*That is, before 1914. I'm going from a transcript made at that time. A handful of people were buried in the cemetery after 1914, but I think it's fair to assume that they probably didn't live past 90. I could be wrong.

** Transcripts are most useful when you read them, which I learned after double checking the listing for Marten and realizing it already said he was an Episcopalian.

1: Dr. Enoch and Phebe Greene

Grave of Phebe Greene and her children

This is the first post in what I hope will be an extensive project, which I'm calling the Episcopalian Cemetery Project. I'll pick a gravestone (or two) from the cemetery, and see what information I can find out about the people based on some basic genealogical research.

I was drawn to this pair of gravestones first because of their sadness. There are a lot of young children buried in this cemetery, along with young mothers, fathers, sisters, etc., but the story behind these graves is that of the total annihilation of this small family within a few years. Five souls are buried beneath these two stones.

Grave of Enoch Greene, MD

Enoch Greene, M.D., as he is identified on his stone, was born in Weare, New Hampshire, on October 29, 1820, the son of Moses Greene and Betty Johnson. He was presumably named for his grandfather, Betty's father, Enoch Johnson. He attended the Clinton Grove Academy, the Nine Partners' Friends' School in Dutchess County, NY, and the Medical University of New York (now NYU School of Medicine).

In his early career, Enoch worked as a physician at Bellevue Hospital and Blackwell's Island Hospital in New York. In May 1845, he moved to New Castle, in Westchester County, where he began his own private practice, and "very soon gathered a large circle of patients and friends," according to The History of Weare, NH.

On June 25 of that year, he married Phebe Hoag Chase, a Quaker who was born in Weare to John Chase and Betty Dow in March 1810. An antiques dealer in Philadelphia had a sampler (now sold) that was created by Phebe's first cousin, Mary Gove, under Phebe's instruction (Phebe is credited on the sampler itself as "instructress").

Sampler made by Phebe's cousin Mary Gove

In 1848, Enoch became the medical director of Sing Sing Prison, and, shortly after, the superintendant of the hospitals on Ward's Island, where in the course of his duties he was responsible for saving two dozen child patients from a fire. He was also credited for improving the quality of care for patients with "ship's fever" (typhus), so that the death rates greatly dropped, and for designing and overseeing the construction of several new buildings on the island.

Then, in August 1849, Phebe died of cholera following only a few hours' illness. Buried with her in the cemetery are their son Freddy and "two infants." 

Enoch was forced to resign his position at Ward's Island in January 1850 due to illness, but by November was well enough to begin working again, as chief physician at Kings County Hospital. During this time Enoch was living in Manhattan as a boarder in a house with four other people, one of them a medical student, according to the 1850 Census, taken in August.

1850 US Federal Census

On March 13, 1851, Enoch married again, to Susan Brundage, the daughter of Gilbert Brundage and Mary Merritt, who was born October 13, 1822. Then, on April 24, Enoch died of typhus in Flatbush, Brooklyn. This was the announcement of his death in the New-York Daily Tribune on April 26.

NY Daily Tribune April 26, 1851

By the 1900 Census, Susan - now Susan Horton - had been widowed again. The census states she had no children (living or dead). Her widowed "sister" (who was probably misidentified, judging by the fact that she was 37 and Susan was 78) and "niece" (age 14) were living with her. Susan died on August 13, 1906, and is buried in the Episcopalian Cemetery.

1900 US Federal Census

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