Developers: Cemetery will be saved

1985-11-10

Developers : Cemetery for blacks will be saved
By JERRY DeMARCO
Staff Writer

Fifty years ago, Orangetown Legislator
Hezekiah Easter helped bury his 15-year-old brother in a small West Nyack cemetery designated for blacks, most of them veterans of the Civil War and Spanish-American War.
"My father poured a little concrete," Easter
said, "and I inscribed my brother's name on it."
Overgrown with weeds and tattered by the
elements, the headstone has survived. So have
others nearby, one nearly 140 years old. The
markers rest on Mount Moor, a three-acre mound
rising amid the swamp and wooded hills that mark the land between Route 59 and the state Thruway.
Until recently, most of the property abutting the
graveyard was owned by Thomas Dexter. But now that land is being purchased by a development firm that hopes to build on it Rockland's largest shopping mall — more than 100,000 square feet bigger than the Nanuet Mall.
Because of those plans, Easter and local historians are concerned for the future of the
historic cemetery, owned by an association that
includes Easter, Elliot Sisco, Georgiana Dennis and Thomas V. Thompson.
"We don't want them to touch what we have
over there," Easter, whose brother died of a
ruptured appendix, said Friday. "We hope that will
be the final resting place of our ancestors. We want to keep it that way."
The developers say the graveyard isn't in the
way of the proposed mall, and they have pledged
their support.
"We're going to put a fence around it, clean it up
a little, and put a plaque on it," said Edward
Kellogg, who represents Clinton Square Plaza Inc., a Syracuse-based firm that has planned the $50 million mall. "We're not going to tear it up."
Kellogg said the developers also have agreed to
build an access road to the cemetery from another that heads in toward the gravesites from Route 59. A minor squabble has developed over the name of the existing road — Easter says it's Cemetery Lane, while Kellogg contends it had been changed to Dexter Road.
Regardless of the road's name, however, the
developer's stated intentions were welcomed
warmly, not only by Easter.
"It appears Mr. Kellogg is going to improve the cemetery and make it a pleasant place, and I'm all for it," said Anthony Lombardi, Rockland's veterans burial commissioner, who recommended a high fence, landscaping and the plaque to Kellogg.
Noting that cemeteries often rot away or disappear altogether, Lombardi added, "It would make me very happy to see it done right."
Although records are scarce, Lombardi said the cemetery specifically was designated for black
militiamen — or "colored" soldiers, as they were called for several years, including 1936, when the last cemetery history of Rockland was
prepared.
No one knows how many blacks are buried on Mount Moor. Among the deceased, though, are
cavalrymen and infantry volunteers, most
from the Civil War. Louis I. Coggershall, a corporal in the Spanish-American War, was buried there in 1937, Lombardi said.
"There was segregation even after they were dead," Easter lamented. For an undetermined
number of years, many Rockland-area blacks were not buried in other cemeteries in the county, he noted.
"People have said there are bodies buried on top of each other in Mount Moor," Lombardi added.
Formerly the property of private owners, the land was deeded for use as a cemetery for "colored"
soldiers in 1849, records show. The Mount Moor Association Inc. subsequently was formed to protect the graveyard, and it won its charter
from the state in 1940.
The only surviving member of the cemetery association's original board of directors is Easter's father. Its first president was the
Rev. William Clyde Taylor, pastor of the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Nyack for 42 years before his death in 1983.
In 1977, Dexter gave the organization $3,000 to refurbish the graveyard in return for an
easement into his property. The officials
then hired a contractor, who cleared the brush and stones. It since has gone untended, Easter
said.
Kellogg noted that the burial of a 5-year-old girl there in 1980 has kept the cemetery active. After 20 years without a burial, a cemetery can be removed, under the law.
Although concerned about Mount Moor, Easter and the historians will wait and see how the
developers fare with Clarkstown. Kellogg's group first would need a zone change — from light industrial to regional shopping — before they
could submit a final plan. A Nov. 26 public hearing at Town Hall is scheduled on the zone change request.
Meanwhile, Easter said, the Mount Moor organization is seeking local volunteers, perhaps the Boy Scouts, to begin cleaning up the
site.

Staff photo by Art Sarno
Elliot N. Sisco, left, and Hezekiah Easter standing near the tomb marker of Henry Adams, Mr. Sisco's grandfather who died at age 75 on June 15,1895.

Newspaper article