Trinity Church Cemetery

I recently revisited one of my favorite New York cemeteries, the churchyard of Trinity Church on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. The cemetery opened in 1697 and is one of three separate burial grounds associated with the church. The other two are at St. Paul's Chapel (also downtown) and uptown at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, the only active cemetery remaining on the island of Manhattan. The churchyard is one of my favorite retreats from the crowds of tourists that overwhelm downtown on the weekends and I rarely run into more than a handful of people the whole time I'm there.

Trinity has its fair share of famous residents, including (the very in right now) Alexander Hamilton, but my favorite epitaph belongs to David Ogden, "who on the 27th of September 1798 in the 29th year of his age fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic." I'm not exactly sure which epidemic it was that took Ogden, but a yellow fever outbreak centered around Philadelphia in that year is a likely candidate.

It's a fairly small cemetery, but its collection of old, classic tombstones is hard to beat. My absolute favorite type of tombstone iconography is the skull—with wings, or better yet, crossbones—and Trinity churchyard has the highest concentration of this design that I've seen. I'm not sure when or why this motif went out of favor, but I think it's long overdue to make a comeback.