Tales of early Adirondack notables resting in one of New York’s oldest cemeteries
By Tom French
It only makes sense that some of the Adirondack’s earliest players are buried in Albany. At the intersection between western expansion and the economic center of New York City, Albany reaped the benefits of both the Erie Canal and Hudson River. And just to the north, a different and much closer frontier beckoned to many.
The names of those early pioneers dot the landscape, from the McIntyre Range to MacNaughton Mountain, Henderson Lake and the Finch, Pruyn Tracts, to name just a few. Many of these historic figures’ lives were intertwined politically, economically, and genetically. And when their lives ended, many found their final resting place in the Albany Rural Cemetery, just a few miles north of New York’s political center in one of the largest and oldest cemeteries near the state capitol.
Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH), a non-profit dedicated to “promoting better understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of the Adirondacks’ unique and diverse architectural heritage,” hosts outings exploring the architectural history and cultural connections between communities and the landscape. One such perennial excursion, sometimes combined with Oakwood Cemetery in Troy (resting place of “Uncle Sam” and Emma Willard) or the Casparus Pruyn House in Latham, is a “Finding the Adirondacks in Albany” program featuring the Albany Rural Cemetery.
Established in 1841 with its first burials in 1845, the 467-acre Albany Rural started, like many large historic cemeteries, as a response to population increases in urban centers and overcrowding in traditional church cemeteries. In a time before public parks or botanical gardens, the rural cemetery movement transformed burial grounds from rows of tombstones into idyllic parks a few miles out of town. With weaving carriage roads, gardens, elaborate monuments, and natural features such as ponds or streams, the landscape was designed to “ease the pain of bereaved relatives.” Frederick Law Olmsted and others were later influenced by rural cemeteries such as this.
Legacy in the Landscape: Remembering Early Settlers
Albany Rural is home to over 135,000 graves “that we know of,” according to Bill Bruce, a member of the cemetery board for 14 years including a stint as president. In the 1800s, when families bought a plot, they would often move their parents or grandparents from a church cemetery, in which case it may not have been recorded. Bruce believes upwards of 150,000 people could be buried in the cemetery.
Albany Rural also has some of the oldest graves in the country, relocated from Washington Park when it was created in the 1870s. Inscriptions in Section 49, written in Dutch, date to the 1600s. Other sections include reinterments from when downtown church cemeteries were being reclaimed for development. “The land in the downtown was becoming too valuable to leave as a cemetery,” said Bruce.
Bruce described his decades-long history at the cemetery starting when he mowed grass while in high school. “When my wife first got pregnant, we came here to look at names on the gravestones, and it’s a great place to teach your kids how to drive when they get their permits.” The cemetery has over 30 miles of roads.
Laid out before landscape architecture was a profession, the cemetery was conceived by civil and military engineer David Bates Douglas. He also designed the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and the Croton Aqueduct, which supplied water to New York City.
Archibald McIntyre and David Henderson
The first stop on the tour was the family plot of Archibald McIntyre, namesake of the mountain range and owner of several mines including the Adirondac Iron Company at what is now known as Tahawus.
McIntyre was the state controller in the early 19th century, where he was in charge of state lotteries. Later, he became wealthy running private lotteries. He moved within the realm of New York’s power brokers and was an advisor to DeWitt Clinton during the building of the Erie Canal. He also served as a member of the New York State Assembly and Senate.
An early trustee of the cemetery, McIntyre’s plot contains over 60 graves of several generations, including another Adirondack notable, Archibald’s son-in-law David Henderson. When Henderson took over as manager of the Adirondac mining operation, he was instrumental at finding new markets. He is credited with bringing the company to profitability after years of losses. Unfortunately, while searching for ways to divert additional water to the waterwheel that powered the piston bellows, his flintlock pistol dropped onto a rock, discharged, and killed him in 1845.
A monument at Calamity Pond (named because of the tragedy), about 4 miles northeast of the Upper Works trailhead, marks the spot of his death. Erected by his children in the early 1850s, it is one of the few man-made structures allowed to remain in the Wilderness Area of the High Peaks.
James MacNaughton
MacNaughton Mountain, disputed member of the 46 club, is named after another son-in-law of Archibald’s buried in the family plot, James MacNaughton. The only remaining building from McInytye’s mining operation is the MacNaughton Cottage, though it was given the name at a later date. MacNaughton wasn’t even born until 1851. His son, also James, was as an early president the Tahawus Club, one of the first sporting clubs in the Adirondacks and a second iteration for the former mining community. The MacNaughton Cottage is celebrated as the place where Vice President Teddy Roosevelt learned that President William McKinley was dying.
Arthur Masten
The next highlight was the grave of Arthur Masten, with its labeled steps leading to a massif with large stone lids that could only have been lowered with a hoist. Born in 1855, his mother was President Chester Arthur’s sister. Masten married the great-granddaughter of Judge Duncan McMartin, McIntyre’s brother-in-law and business partner at the mine. Masten would become a vice president and director of the McIntyre Iron Works, a successor to the Adirondac Iron Company. One of founders of the Tahawus Club, he wrote two books on the history of the area, “The Story of the Adirondac” (1923) and “The Tahawus Club, 1898-1933” (1935). The Adirondack Experience has a significant collection of Masten’s papers. His mansion in Newcomb, which also served as a retreat for the National Lead Mining Company, is privately owned.
Other notables at Albany Rural Cemetery
After visiting the grave of former President Chester Arthur, we arrived at the last stops of the tour: the Pruyn family plots. Robert Hewson Pruyn’s inscribed tablets of red scotch granite are under a Japanese ginkgo tree – a tribute to his time as minister to Japan (ambassador in today’s parlance) during the Civil War. He took his son, Robert Clarence, with him. Many believe the experience influenced the design of the main lodge of Great Camp Santanoni from its Phoenix shape to its interconnected roofs and verandas connecting six buildings.
Perhaps the most interesting story with an Adirondack connection, though with macabre details, involves serial killer Gary Evans, a Troy native whose first brush with the law occurred in Lake Placid when he was arrested for trespassing and stealing property in 1977. For those crimes, Evans spent four years at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.
In the early 1990s, Evans was accused of stealing a 1,000-pound marble bench and a bronze eagle from Civil War General Adolph von Steinwehr’s monument at Albany Rural. Evans is also believed to have hid out on the cemetery grounds. “I found cushions from lawn chairs under there from when he was hiding out from the police. I think that’s where he must have slept. They found a duffel bag here with all of his guns and weapons too,” said Bruce.
Albany Rural is filled with other notables of non-Adirondack history, including Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler, Governor William Marcy (for whom the mountain was named), New York Central magnate Erastus Corning, Titanic survivor Gilbert Tucker, and Andrew Meneely of the bell foundry. For lovers of William Kennedy, scenes from “Ironweed” with Jack Nicholson were filmed in section 52.
Nice research, but I’d also remind folks that a lot of early settlers in the Adirondacks came from Vermont in the early 1800s, an immigration movement termed by historians as “New York Fever”.
Great article about Albany Rural Cemetery. You missed one, slightly more contemporary resident of Albany Rural that is connected to the Adirondacks: Dan Luciano. Dan was a staff attorney at NYSDEC when I hired him to come work for me at the Open Space Institute. Dan worked with me on acquiring 10,000 acres at “Tahawus”, the landscape that McIntrye, Henderson, McNaughton and Masten exploited for its iron. Dan crafted the subdivision that kept key historic resources out of the Forest Preserve so they could be maintained and interpreted and oversaw the restoration of the iron blast furnace and McNaughton Cottage. Dan lived in Schodack and died of a brain tumor well before his time. But New Yorkers have him to thank for preserving and protecting this magnificent property (and many others in the Park).
Thanks Joe for that well deserved mention of Dan. I always admired the dedication you both had to the Adirondacks. He was taken from us too soon.
There are other notable Adirondack figures interred at ARC:
* Alfred Billings Street – the poet, state librarian, and author of the classic “The Indian Pass” (Section 37, Lot 23)
* James Hall – the state geologist who was with ebenezer Edmond, William redfield, et Al on Aug 5, 1837 when the first recorded ascent of Mt Marcy was made (Section 18, Lot 93)
* Simeon DeWitt – the Surveyor General of NYS who directed numerous surveys of land tracts in the Adirondacks in the early 1800s (Section 56, Lot 30)
* Louis D Pilsbury – for whom the Adirondack fire tower peak, Pillsbury Mountain, is named (Lot 1, Section 36)
* Also just worth mentioning that Charles B. Redfield, son of William C Redfield (for whom Mt Redfield is named) (Lot 62 Sec 18), and John Alden Dix, who created the State Conservation Commission (predecessor of the NYS DEC) (Section 41, Lot 11)
Also, The ARC once used a name from poet Charles Fenno Hoffman. Yes, the same CFH who coined the term Tahawus for Mount Marcy and Towarloondah for Blue Mountain, among others. From a post from “History Albany Rural Cemetery” group, he wrote a highly sentimental poem that made use of two early names for the new Rural Cemetery. In its first years, the Albany Rural Cemetery went through several name changes, including “Tawasentha” and “The Forest Cemetery.” These verses first appeared in the Albany Evening Journal on May 29, 1847.
Thanks John!