Old Cold Spring Cemetery

An article by PHM Intern Clara Finkelstein

The Old Cold Spring Cemetery (Cold Spring’s oldest cemetery), may easily be overlooked by the casual passerby. And while it may be well-known to and loved by its community, due to its myriad of names (e.g. Mountain Avenue Yard, Mountain Avenue Cemetery, Davenport Cemetery, God’s Acre Cemetery, etc.) and its close proximity to the Nelsonville Cemetery or Cedar Street Yard, the story behind the Old Cold Spring Cemetery proves a challenge for the non-native intern to track down and pinpoint. However, the rich history that lies encoded in epigraphs, mysterious iconography and headstone design is abundantly worthwhile, if one is willing to read around a couple centuries worth of rust, mildew, and dirt. 

The oldest headstones in the Old Cold Spring Cemetery are that of Thomas and Martha Davenport, with death dates of 1790 and 1789, respectively (Fig.’s 3-4).

Thomas Davenport and his family were the first permanent settlers in Cold Spring and the museum has acquired a copy of the fascinating Davenport family Bible. The Davenport family headstones are all similar in material and design. Made of a dark brown metallic material with grooved cuts along the top edges of the stones, they most closely resemble the headboard of a colonial-style bed, especially due to their matching initialed footstones (Fig. 9).

The tripartite or “three-lobed shape” of these headstones was the most popular New England design in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Farber+ Fig. 5). The Davenport headstones are good examples of a late eighteenth century rendition of this style, as they are taller than the standard thirty inches and include a steeper and more dramatic tympanum with matching shoulders, and have none of the stylistic tablet embellishments more common five decades earlier.

There are thirteen headstones in the Old Cold Spring Cemetery constructed in this same material or style, not all of which belong to the Davenport family, but most falling within the same approximate twenty-year period (1790-1820).  They represent a growing settlement that while post-Revolutionary war remained relatively small, was still very much in touch with the headstone trends and fashions of the era. 

In the early to mid-eighteenth century, gravestone design changed to feature a sleeker, more simple shape (Farber). As early as 1802, the Old Cold Spring Cemetery begins to show examples of this paler, rectangular tablet with a rounded tympanum and squared-off shoulders. Later in the century, they would increasingly begin to include the popular neoclassical urn and willow motifs (Fig. 6). Added to these were drapery designs, the occasional Star of David, and even Masonic symbols (Fig. 7). 

But use of extensive symbols and ornamentation was not the only way of displaying wealth post-mortem. Some headstones appear deceptively rough and cheap due to hundreds of years of accumulated weathering. For example, as transportation and quarrying advanced, white marble, which was especially vulnerable to unsightly black lichen and acidic precipitation, became more popular.  Fig. 8 is a good example of a marble headstone that today may appear unremarkable, but at the time it was erected, the height of chic headstone design. 

While larger trends in greater New England’s headstone design are evident in the Old Cold Spring Cemetery, the graveyard is ultimately unique, and contains many variations. American headstone design has first and foremost always been a matter of individual and familial preference, which has rarely, if ever, been bound by the fads of the day. Grief and mourning is intensely personal, and this is beautifully illustrated by many of Old Cold Spring’s more unusual stones.

While some families chose to honor loved ones with grand monuments topped by urns or mysterious hooded figures, or three dimensional carved tablets resembling church windows (Fig.s 10-11)…

…others chose far less extravagant, but equally poignant memorials (Fig. 12-13).

Including lines of verse was common, but Alice McGurk’s headstone boasts eight lines of seemingly original poetry composed by her husband. Many of the stones belonging to Irish immigrants contain the traditionally Catholic IHS symbol, while a handful of soldier’s stones are plainly yet powerfully done with the name of their regiment and a badge-shaped border (Fig. 15-16).

Masonic members paid tribute to fellow members, such as Henry Johnson, an “active member of the Philipstown Lodge no. 352,” with elaborately engraved dedications. On the top of the hill, the Morris family crypt overlooks the cemetery proudly, with a plaque added by the citizens of Philipstown in 2007 (Fig.’s 17-18). 

The Old Cold Spring cemetery is a remarkably varied and well-preserved example of an early American graveyard. While it is an effective case study in the evolution of New England headstone styles of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is also home to many more eccentric stones, bearing centuries-old secrets just waiting to be recovered. According to Jesse Lie Farber’s paper published by the 2003 American Antiquarian Society, the first step towards preserving and revitalizing old yards such as Cold Spring is to encourage frequent visitation, particularly by school groups. How fitting, then, that the Old Cold Spring Cemetery, a monument to the town’s rich past, should lie just across the street from Haldane Elementary School, a testament to its future.