Once again relying on Joel Munsell’s wonderful 1876 “Men and Things in Albany Two Centuries Ago,” Hoxsie has to share a description of the graveyard originally associated with the old Dutch Church:
“Bodies were allowed to be buried under the church in consideration of the payment of a sum for the privilege. There was at first a grave-yard in the street, adjoining the church on the west, and when the lot on which the Middle Dutch church now stands was appropriated for a cemetery, the bodies under the church were not all removed, it may be inferred, for in digging a trench on the north side of State street last year, it perforated the old foundation still remaining there, and human bones were thrown out. The dead were borne on the shoulders of men from the church to the cemetery on Beaver street. Although a trite subject to many of you, I will venture to mention that in process of time this ground on Beaver street was completely buried over, when a foot of sand was added to the surface, and a new tier of coffins placed upon the first, each coffin required to be square, and to be placed against the previous one. The ancient denizens of the city still repose there in three layers, and I wish every one of their descendants could be thoroughly imbued with a filial sentiment of the impropriety, to say the least, of ever parting with that ground; but that the church edifice now standing upon it might be preserved as a monument to the venerated dead beneath. The bones of Anneke Janse being supposed to rest there, and so great a multitude claiming descent from her, and large expectations from her estate being so general, what adverse influence might arise from a mercenary alienation of those bones, should give us pause!”
We have much more on the journey those bodies took from churchyard to churchyard in this post on the Old Dutch Church.
(Note: photograph is from St. George’s Episcopal Church in Schenectady. Not Albany, and not Dutch.)