Digging into the City’s Cemeteries

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Dusk frames the scene in an eerie silhouette.

Statues and crucifixes climb from stone slabs on a landscape freckled with monuments and
mausoleums. A tall obelisk rises from the earth, its pillar pointing - one presumes - toward heaven.

The only noise is the crunching sound of fall leaves being trampled underfoot and beneath headstones lie the remains of those who once walked the city’s streets, once lived the city’s life, and forevermore now rest for all eternity.

‘They may be gone,’ says Mary-Jane Rau Pelzer, ‘but they’re not forgotten.’

To illustrate her point, she cites a recent visit from two brothers who came to town from Connecticut and Ohio respectively, searching for genealogical information. The brothers visited the Gideon Putnam Cemetery and discovered their ancestry in the grave marker of John O.
and Phoebe Dostie.

Pelzer, Pelzer, who is the heritage events coordinator at the Saratoga Springs Visitor Center, holds a special affinity for Gideon Putnam, whose historical contributions to the city are significant.

Born in Massachusetts, Putnam moved here in his 20s. Early in the 19th century,
he donated a plot of land as a site for a future burial ground.
While building Congress Hall, Putnam fell from the scaffolding and suffered severe injuries.
He died a year later. In 1812, he became the first person interred at the cemetery named for him.

‘The Putnam Burial Ground is interesting. I see it as a place that’s rich in history,’ Pelzer says. ‘It speaks to us. There’s a story to be told there.’

The Putnam cemetery is one of dozens of interment sites throughout the county. Some are small and intimate - little more than a cluster of plots on family-owned farms.

Larger public cemeteries are found at the Greenridge on Lincoln Avenue. It announces its presence on a street sign near its entrance that simply reads: Dead End.

‘Greenridge is still beautiful today,’ Pelzer says. ‘It was intended to make a statement at the time, and it still does.’

Built during the ‘rural cemetery movement’ of the 1830s, the site was a response to the romantic notion of creating a visually idyllic and natural setting in which to pay tribute to the departed.

‘These were beautiful places where people would take picnics,’ Pelzer says.
The picnics, she believes, eased the pain of mourning.

The Greenridge was consecrated in June 1844, and counts among its thousands of interments those of political figures and a motion picture producer, Charles Brackett.

Brackett, a screenwriter with Paramount Studios in the 1930s, had a hand in a number of successful films, including the Oscar-winning ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ ‘The Lost Weekend’ and the 1953 film ‘Titanic.’

The rural cemetery movement convinced families to buy individual gravesites and family plots. Remains of their relatives from other sites were relocated to the new grounds.

‘It’s interesting in that you can see those dates previous to 1844 (the consecration of the Greenridge). You know that those remains were moved there,’ Pelzer says. Or in the case of the old Sadler Cemetery, should have been moved from there.

The Sadler was named after Seth Sadler, a prosperous Wilton farmer who moved to Saratoga Springs in the 1780s. He donated the land a few roads south of Spring Avenue, overlooking High Rock Spring.

The Sadler was Saratoga’s first cemetery. Its first burial was Fenn Wadsworth, a settler from Connecticut. Washburn was buried on June 21, 1785.

For nearly a century, the Sadler Cemetery expanded to include Revolutionary War soldiers and Roger Birchard, grandfather of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, the 19th president of the United States.

In 1874, when word reached historian William Stone that the bodies interred at the Sadler would be relocated, probably to be replaced by building lots, Stone sent off an angry reply.

‘Our graveyards ought to be venerated as holy ground.
Men should no more consent to such changes than they would consent to sell the bones of
their own fathers and mothers for knife handles,’ Stone wrote in condemnation.

‘Let those which are there stand as a memorial to the old and good men who sleep beneath.
Let them sleep!’ Stone continued.

One of the problems with the Sadler Cemetery was its location, situated on high land.

‘Addison Mallery was mayor of Saratoga Springs starting in the 1930s and served a number of terms,’ says City Historian Martha Stonequist says.
‘In his memoirs, Mallery wrote of the Sadler Cemetery that was located high on a slope on Nelson Avenue. When the snow would run off in the springtime, it would upend some of the coffins.’

Hastily, just before the remains were moved from the cemetery, Cornelius E. Durkee
made a detailed record of the grave stones and markings. He completed his work
on Sept. 30, 1876.

‘It is in a neglected condition,’ Durkee wrote, shortly before the removal began.
‘Before many years, the knoll upon which it is situated will doubtless be reduced
to the level of the surrounding lots.’

While the hill never was leveled and remains today, there were more shocking developments.

At the dawn of the 20th century, while excavations were being conducted on the site of the Sadler Cemetery, an array of bones, skulls and coffins were found poking through the mud
and dirt.

In one instance, schoolchildren discovered a skull and brought it to school, where a teacher confirmed it was human, from the old burial site.

Looking back at the Sadler Cemetery for her book ‘Chronicles of Saratoga,’ Evelyn Barrett Britten searched for one particular 18-inch-high headstone with a decorative vine carved
into marble that marked the spot where President Hayes’ grandfather was laid to rest.
She wondered where it was relocated.

‘The grave was moved from Sadler Cemetery,’ Britten wrote in the anthology, published in 1947. ‘But there is no record of where.’

In the movement of remains from the site, it would seem that a number of those at rest since the 1700s at Saratoga Springs’ first cemetery were most likely left behind.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, Oct. 31, 2003