A story of a relocated cemetery in New York City

Manhattan,
New York City,
New York

No Resting Place Is Forever

St. George’s Chapel and Its Vanished Churchyard

Manhattan’s landscape has been rewritten many times. Over nearly four centuries of continuous growth, the city has displaced, built over, or formally relocated dozens of early graveyards. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of individual burials once lay beneath streets, parks, and commercial blocks that no longer bear any visible trace of the dead. There is no single master list of these vanished cemeteries. What survives are scattered newspaper notices, church records, municipal reports, and the occasional stone that was moved and re-inscribed elsewhere.

St. George’s Chapel on Beekman Street is one of those stories.

There are few things intended to be more permanent than a grave.
A family burial vault, even more so.

In eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New York, prosperous families paid handsomely for substantial underground vaults beside a prominent church...

A Church for a Growing City

In April 1748, Trinity Church decided a new chapel was needed for parishioners living farther east as New York pushed beyond its older core. Land was secured near what became Beekman and Cliff Streets. Construction began around 1748–1749, and St. George’s Chapel was consecrated in 1752.

The neighborhood was sometimes called Chapel Hill; Beekman Street itself had once been known as Chapel Street. A burial ground soon took shape beside the church. By the later eighteenth century it held both ordinary graves and substantial family vaults. For those who could afford them, these chambers offered more than burial space. They offered a permanent family place in the city—a spot where husband might eventually join wife, children join parents, and later generations join those who had gone before.

That was the promise.
The city, however, was already shifting around them.

Revolution, Fire, and Rebuilding

St. George’s endured the Revolutionary years when Trinity Church itself did not. During the British occupation, fire destroyed Trinity while St. George’s remained standing and continued to host worship.

In 1811 the chapel became an independent Episcopal parish. Then, in January 1814, fire gutted it. The exterior walls survived; the church was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1815. The burial ground beside it continued in use.

One name tied to the churchyard in this period is Oliver H. Hicks, a wealthy businessman and civic figure. His name appears in connection with an 1817 family vault, though Hicks himself did not die until 1832. The distinction matters. A date carved on or associated with an old family vault does not always mark a death. Sometimes it records the year the tomb was established or purchased. People were arranging their final resting places years—sometimes decades—before they needed them.

They expected those arrangements to last.

The City Moves Away

New York kept moving. In the first half of the nineteenth century, fashionable residential neighborhoods drifted steadily northward, and the congregation of St. George’s moved with them. Peter G. Stuyvesant gave land beside Stuyvesant Square for a new church; the congregation relocated in the 1840s, the present parish dating the move to 1846.

The old Beekman Street chapel was left behind. Trinity regained control of the property, and by 1851 another congregation—the Church of the Holy Evangelist—was using the building. The surrounding streets grew increasingly commercial.

The churchyard remained.
But not for long.

1857: The First Removal

The first major destruction of the cemetery came not because the church had closed, but because the city needed a wider street. In 1857 Cliff Street was broadened. Roughly half the old burial ground lay in the path.

Family vaults were opened. Contemporary accounts named several prominent families whose tombs were disturbed: the Posts, Giffords, Thompsons, Doughtys, Govers, and Tituses. Inside were the remains of people whose relatives had once spent considerable sums to secure them private, substantial resting places. Those chambers had become obstacles to a road project.

Most of the remains removed in 1857 were reportedly taken to Trinity Church Cemetery in upper Manhattan; others went to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens. About half the churchyard still survived beside the aging chapel for another decade.

1867: The End Becomes Inevitable

By the late 1860s lower Manhattan had transformed. The residential congregation that once filled St. George’s had long departed. Commerce had taken its place.

Late in 1867 newspapers reported that the old St. George’s property would be sold and redeveloped for warehouses. There was nostalgia in the coverage; writers recognized that one of New York’s surviving eighteenth-century landmarks was about to vanish. Nostalgia did not halt the sale.

Early in 1868, Phelps, Dodge & Co. bought the property for approximately $145,000. Another $5,000 was reportedly set aside against possible claims by the owners of burial vaults. More than a century after the chapel’s founding, the dead still held legal and practical claims on some of the most valuable real estate in the city. Those claims had to be settled.

The Remaining Dead Are Removed

In the spring of 1868 the remaining graves and vaults were cleared. Contemporary reports said the human remains were carefully gathered and reinterred elsewhere. Exactly where every individual went is far harder to determine.

Some people from St. George’s can still be traced to other New York cemeteries. Records and later memorials point to Trinity Church Cemetery and other nineteenth-century grounds. But the surviving documentation is incomplete. Names disappear. Family vaults become scattered single graves. Dates copied from old vault covers are sometimes later mistaken for dates of death. A few individuals can be followed from one cemetery to another. Others simply fade from the record.

That uncertainty is itself part of the story.

August 1868: St. George’s Disappears

By August 1868 demolition of the old chapel was underway. An illustration published at the time showed the once-important church reduced to ruins. Soon the chapel, the remaining churchyard, and the family vaults beneath it were gone from the landscape. Commercial buildings took their place. No grassy cemetery remained to suggest that generations of New Yorkers had once expected this ground to hold them forever.

What Money Could—and Could Not—Buy

It would be easy to turn the story of St. George’s into a simple moral about wealth. That would miss the larger point.

Money mattered. It bought elaborate family vaults instead of ordinary graves. It bought carefully built underground chambers, heavy stone covers, and space for generations of one family. For decades those vaults performed exactly as intended.

What money could not buy was immunity from change. A church could relocate. A fashionable residential neighborhood could become a commercial district. A quiet street could need widening. Land once set aside for the dead could grow too valuable—or too inconvenient—to leave untouched.

The people buried at St. George’s ranged from those whose names once carried weight in New York to those about whom almost nothing can now be learned. Eventually the distinction mattered little. The street reached them all. Then the warehouses did.

Today, even identifying some of the people who once lay in St. George’s requires piecing together newspaper accounts, cemetery records, family histories, and fragments of inscriptions copied while the old burial ground was being destroyed. The enormous stone vaults are gone. The chapel is gone. Even the landscape that once gave those graves meaning has vanished.

A burial place can be chosen with care.
A monument can be built to endure.
A family can spare no expense.

But no one can purchase permanence.

Known and Reported Names Associated with the St. George’s Churchyard Vaults

Status definitions

• Confirmed — Supported by a record that specifically connects the person (or family vault) to St. George’s.

• Probable — Identity strongly fits the surviving evidence but is not yet proven by a direct primary source.

• Possible — Plausible identification; significant corroboration is still missing.

• Unresolved — Name or inscription is known, but the individual has not been reliably identified.

Date / Name as recorded / Status / Evidence summary

1768 — J. S. Horn Unresolved

Possibly John S. Horn. The middle initial is consistent with English naming patterns emerging in mid-18th-century New York. Horn and Van Horn families were active merchant families in the Montgomery and East Wards near Beekman and Cliff Streets. The 1768 date may mark vault purchase rather than death.

1771 — H. Wagener Unresolved

Initials and surname only; no individual identification yet.

1771 — Daniel S. Croix Possible

Likely connected to the prominent De St. Croix family. May represent either a 1771 death or the year the vault was established. Many family members left for Nova Scotia as Loyalists after the Revolution.

1772 — Drake & Searis Unresolved

Appears to be a paired or family vault inscription; the individuals have not been identified.

1774 — Thomas Vard Unresolved

Name appears in records; no corroborating identity established. Possibly “Thomas Ward.”

1781 — Benjamin Payne Possible

A Benjamin Payne (b. 25 Mar 1744, Southold – d. 25 Sep 1781, Southold) is recorded as having been moved from an earlier burial site, but the specific origin is not confirmed as St. George’s.

1787 — Helen Dickson Possible

Trinity Cemetery records note that she was “relocated from another cemetery,” but the source cemetery is not named as St. George’s.

1787 — W. Mercier Probable

Attractive identification with Capt. William Mercier (1716–1797), whose remains are at Trinity Church Cemetery. The 1787 date is more consistent with vault establishment than with his actual death in 1797. Direct documentary link to the St. George’s inscription is still needed.

1787 — C. Bradford Unresolved

Shares vault context with W. Mercier; identity not yet established.

1789 — John Post / Posts Confirmed

Trinity records explicitly state remains “relocated from St George Chapel, Beekman & Cliff Streets.” Contemporary accounts describe the Post vault as containing seven tightly clustered bodies. William Post is also noted in the same cemetery context.

1817 — John Bloodgood Confirmed

Born 1773, died 29 Jan 1817. Originally at St. George’s Chapel Cemetery; later moved to Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx (Oak Hill Plots 97 & 98), with wife and children.

1817 — Samuel A. Burtus / A. Samuel Burtus Confirmed

New York death index records death 20 Nov 1817 and burial at St. George’s. Name-order variation appears in sources.

1817 — O. H. Hicks Probable

Consistent with Oliver H. Hicks, who died in 1832. The 1817 date therefore likely records vault ownership or establishment rather than death.

1817 — David Dunbar Unresolved

Full name recorded; no further identifying evidence yet. Date may indicate either burial or vault purchase.

1817 — Thomas Lawrence Unresolved

Not the Thomas Lawrence (1733–1817) who married Elizabeth Fish and served as a captain in the Revolution.

1817 — George N. Whetlan Unresolved

No corroborating identity; spelling may require further investigation.

1817 — J. Caroms Possible

Possible mistranscription of Isaac Carow (Isaac Quentin Carow), wealthy shipping merchant of 222 Pearl Street. Died 3 Sept 1850; wife Eliza died May 1837. Both are at Trinity Church Cemetery. Cursive “J” and “I” were frequently indistinguishable.

1817 — T. H. Smith Possible

Thomas H. Smith fits the social and business context of the period, but the identification is not yet securely tied to the St. George’s inscription.

1818 — L. Bartow Unresolved

Initials and surname only.

1818 — W. A. Bartow Unresolved

Initials and surname only.

1818 — George Treadwell Unresolved

Full name recorded; no further identification yet.

1818 — Joseph Kissam Unresolved

The Joseph Kissam buried at Green-Wood has dates that do not match; left unresolved pending better evidence.

1818 — Peter Guffens Unresolved

No corroborating identification; surname spelling may prove significant.

1822 — E. Higgins Unresolved

Initials and surname only.

1822 — A. V. Winans Probable

Matches Anthony Van Arsdale Winans, a prominent New York merchant of the period. Supporting identification currently rests on secondary rather than primary cemetery or contemporary records.

No date — Thomas V/Ward Unresolved

Even the surname reading is uncertain; requires original-source verification.

Capt. Samuel Gifford / Gilford (1729–1821) Confirmed

Family vault specifically described among those opened and exhumed; matches 1857 reporting on the Gifford vault.

Penelope Gifford (1737–1789) Confirmed

Wife of Samuel; interred in the St. George’s family vault according to surviving notes.

Mary Gifford Confirmed

Daughter of Samuel; interred beside her father at St. George’s on 10 Aug 1827.

John Thompson Probable

A Thompson family vault is documented among those opened in 1857; individual identification of this John Thompson still needs the underlying newspaper text.

William Doughty Probable

Doughty family vault is documented in the 1857 removal; specific identification of William Doughty as an occupant requires further corroboration.

John H. Grover / Gover Possible

Cemetery list uses “Grover”; 1857 summary uses “Gover.” Original article needed to settle spelling and identity.

James H. Titus Probable

Titus family vault is named among those opened in 1857; individual identification of James H. Titus still deserves additional confirmation.