The historic Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, New York is celebrating its 175-anniversary next week, but there’s more to the rural cemetery than its “gorgeous” rooms and towering tombstones. As reports, there’s a story behind the stones.
Heidi Klinowski will be buried in the historic cemetery with a plot picked near the chapel - so if there’s an afterlife, she’ll still know what’s going on, she says.
She joined the “Friends of Oakwood Cemetery,” a group of volunteers who promote and support the cemetery, in the late 1990’s. Now in her 80’s she walked the park with her family and friends as a kid and is the go-to “for all things history and tours for Oakwood.” Klinowski and I drove around the nearly 12 miles of existing roads and pathways to take in the sights, sounds, and beauty of the final resting place of more than 60,000 people.
She gave me the low-down on the history of some of the people who are buried here. She says she has generations of ancestors buried here - not all of whom she knew or knew was buried here until she joined the friends group. During our tour, we ran into another friend of the cemetery, Donna Guzy, who told us this:
“Elmore Elmore is down here. His mother changed his name so it was Elmore Elmore,” Guzy said. “And there's another one, Griffin, Griffin that's buried up here somewhere. I haven't found him yet. There's a Donald McDonald someplace too.”
While out enjoying the serenity of the paved and gravel roads, Klinowski says it’s the names, dates and architecture that catch her eye. On a gravel road deep in the landscape, she uncovered a stone overgrown with grass. The stone bore the surname Billings, which drew her in because of a familial relation. Carrie Billings was 8-years-old when she died. Her parents sold marble from a store they owned in the city’s downtown. Her parents had gone to Vermont to buy more marble and left her with her grandmother and uncle.
“He was 19 years old. He was going hunting, and he had a rifle in his hand and the newspaper article, I mean, they gave every detail in those times, which is amazing. They said she was dancing around in front of him, and said, ‘Can I go with you, please? Can I go with you to go hunting?’ And he said, ‘No, you can't. Be careful. Carrie, the gun might go off.’ And just as he said that the gun went off and it hit her in the face and killed her. Oh, my God, would you ever think by finding a little tiny bit of a stone here that there would be a horrible or any kind of story like that behind it? "Well, continuing further, a couple days later, in the newspaper, was a whole thing about her funeral, how they had this purple velvet lined casket and silver lift rings on the sides, and a silver plate with her name on it,” Klinowski said.
The graveyard was founded in 1850 following a discussion with six prominent city men who thought the area needed a rural, non-denominational cemetery. Albany Rural Cemetery had been founded about half a dozen years before and the men said the eastern side of the river needed one too. Kathy Sheehan, the City of Troy and Rensselaer County’s historian, says it rose to prominence because it was built at just the right time.
“You just had such a different it's a different change, and how we thought about death and dying, you know, is that really going away from that very kind of Puritan standard where you know you're you were, you knew which was going to happen you're either going to have or you're going to heaven or hell, and were really starting to embrace nature as a theme,” Sheehan said. “It shows up in not only paintings, but furniture and everything. And this rural cemetery movement follows suit with all that.”
Sheehan projects the cemetery has enough space to bury people for the next 100 years. Sheehan, a Troy-native who also plans to be buried here (emphasizing there is no rush), says people use the wooded and waterfall-filled green land for recreation, too. A train would take visitors to 101st Street where they could access the cemetery or take carriage rides to their family’s stones for picnics. But now, there’s walking tours, runners, and more who take a gander at the tombstones when they pass by.
“During covid, it exploded. People felt, you know, you wanted to be outside,’ Sheehan said. “You wanted to have someplace safe. The beautiful part of Oakwood is it has these amazing meandering trails, and you can be by yourself, and if somebody's coming down, well, you just move off into another little trail and a little roadway and things like that. And so, it really became a safe haven for myself included.”
Clint Anglin and Naomie Jaffe have been walking in the cemetery for 30 years. They live nearby and are fascinated by the wildlife that roam the grounds.
“Well, there's habitats. It's like a wildlife refuge. Yeah, there's so many, there's foxes and all kinds of great variety of animal and wild life. And also, it's quiet. There's no traffic to speak of,” Anglin and Jaffe said.
Among the historic architecture are the burial grounds of Civil War generals, several RPI presidents, Emma Willard, and most famously, Uncle Sam and his wife Betsey and their three children. Also of note, past and president board members, the late-state senator Joe Bruno, and founders of the cemetery and their families.
Work continues daily by a grounds crew, volunteers, the cemetery administrator and the head grounds superintendent, who both live on the grounds.
Celebrations marking the cemetery’s 175th anniversary begin on October 16 with a fundraising gala in the Earl Memorial Chapel and crematorium, which is home to the so-called “gorgeous room” with its stained-glass panels and high ceilings, followed by a Victorian tea and lawn party on October 18, and tours starting at noon on the October 19.
