The Dead Within: Cemeteries Within Cemeteries

The burial grounds of western Queens’ Cemetery Belt are old indeed–most were established by Roman Catholic churches, such as St.Patricks, and other denominations such as the Lutheran Church–well before the Civil War. In some cases, cemeteries were forced to incorporate the burial grounds of founding Queens families. The remains of such families still lie mouldering within slightly less ancient surroundings. Today on Brownstoner Queens, we will risk disturbing the shades and spectres of these ancient spirits, and briefly disturb their resting places.

BETTS CEMETERY, within MOUNT ZION CEMETERY, located along 54th Avenue near 58th Street.

Mount Zion, a Jewish cemetery, occupies about 80 acres in Maspeth near New Calvary Cemetery and the BQE. It was opened in the early 1890s under the auspices of Chevra Bani Sholom and later by the Elmwier Cemetery Association (Elmwier Avenue is a former name of 54th Avenue).

A walk in Mount Zion will produce a surprising and poignant reminder of burial practices long forgotten… the faces of the dead are preserved on some of the tombstones.

In a process known as ‘enameling,’ photographs of the deceased are burned into porcelain (in a process described in detail in John Yang’s book, “Mount Zion: Sepulchral Photographs”). This was a custom brought to the USA by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. A look at newer gravesites in NYC will reveal that placing photos of the deceased on gravestones is returning. In the Mt. Zion stones, the tablets are mostly oval and some are gilt-edged. Some are heavily retouched, so they look vaguely unreal, as if they were drawn, not shot with a camera. Some are formally posed while some are candid. Many of them capture people in their prime. So many died young in that era. Most of the men are attired in suits, while the women sport the big hats so popular in the 1920s and 30s.

Mt. Zion is open six days a week (except Saturdays), and while Yang’s book is hard to find on area bookshelves, it is available for purchase at Mt. Zion’s office, which is modern and has a friendly staff.

A much smaller family plot, Betts Cemetery, is located in a hilly area of Mt. Zion Cemetery near 54th Avenue and 58th Street. Mt. Zion was built in 1893 surrounding the Betts family burial plot; Captain Richard (1613-1713) and wife Joanna’s home stood at the southwest corner of territory now surrounded by the cemetery. It was razed in 1899. According to legend, Captain Richard Betts dug his own grave in the Betts family plot a few days before he died. His grave is not detectable but many of his descendants’ are.

Betts Cemetery is easily distinguished from surrounding Mt. Zion, which is tightly packed. There’ve been no burials in Betts for over a century, and so there’s still a lot of space left over.

Hand-etched stones showing the death date and initials of the deceased have stood up to centuries of weathering. Daniel Betts Jr. (d. 1762) stone (great-grandson of Thomas) is pictured above.

ALSOP CEMETERY, within CALVARY CEMETERY near the Laurel Hill Boulevard and Review Avenue gate.

Richard Alsop’s gravestone, dated 1718, is the oldest in Calvary Cemetery. The Alsop family burial site, in a southern corner of Calvary, pre-existed Calvary by over a century and was simply incorporated into Calvary when the land it stood on was purchased by St. Patrick’s. Other unusual cemetery placements are the Drake Park cemetery in Hunts Point, Bronx, and the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park where actor Montgomery Clift was laid to rest.

Richard Alsop had been bequeathed the land by his cousin, British immigrant Thomas Wandell.

Several members of the Alsop family were interred here between 1718 and the late 1880s, as well as the family’s slaves, whose graves are unmarked. The family was prominent in Newtown, and married into the Fish family and King family, which produced a NYS Governor and 1816 Presidential candidate Rufus King, whose mansion stands in Jamaica. His wife was neé Mary Alsop. The last of the Alsops died without issue in the 1880s.