First, Calvary

Woe to that New Yorker who achieves our common societal goal, which is being always at the head of a long queue – the first in line.

There isn’t much I can tell you about Esther Ennis, an Irish immigrant, other than she was the very first person buried in Calvary Cemetery in 1848.

Intonations and rumors of a broken heart followed her to the grave, which allude to a love affair gone wrong and conjure lurid fantasies of the port city of New York in the 1840′s. Unfortunately, no primary sources have emerged that discuss the young (for our modern era, back in 1848 – 29 was “getting up there”) woman.

From nytimes.com, an article from 1884 about Calvary’s first grave digger, John McCann:

“Thirty-six years ago yesterday the first body was interred in Calvary Cemetery,” said John McCann, gatekeeper at the main entrance to the cemetery yesterday afternoon. “Yes, Sir, I remember it well. It was the body of Esther Ennis, a handsome looking Irish girl, who …

Quite obviously, this isn’t the original grave marker, its style and typography betray a 20th century vintage, and I would wager that it was carved sometime in the 20th century based on style and material.

A half remembered and impossible to locate report from some forgotten publication once revealed that an Irish organization like the Hibernians (or was it a Catholic Charity of some stripe?) made it their business to place this marker on the presumed gravesite in Section 1 in First Calvary, but it doesn’t seem to have made it online so I cannot supply a link to you.

Regardless, this is one of Calvary Cemetery’s proverbial “needle in a haystack locations,“ and it is one easily bypassed by casual visitors to the great polyandrion.

The Manhattan address demarcated on the stone is 139 Clinton Street, which, presuming that the addresses on Clinton Street conform to the same logic as they did in 1848, should be here.

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.