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Brooklyn was the incubator of baseball in the National Pastime’s infancy–the 1840s, 50s, and 60s. And, the first national baseball hero and legend, James Creighton, is interred at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery–where almost 200 baseball pioneers are permanent residents (you may find Glenn Collins’s wonderful article about Green-Wood and baseball, which was published in The New … Read more
I’ve been leading Halloween-related tours of Green-Wood (featuring spirits, murders, and mayhem) for about 20 years now. It has always been one on the Saturday before Halloween, then one on the Sunday. And, not surprisingly, given the association of cemeteries and Halloween, these are typically our biggest tours of the year. But this year was … Read more
Tuesday, April 15, was a rainy and windy day. Winter trying to slide back in for a final run. It was a good day to finish up your taxes. But it was an even better day to honor America’s first baseball hero, James Creighton. It was Jim’s 173rd birthday. So, who was this James Creighton? … Read more
Green-Wood’s exhibition, “William F. Mangels: Amusing the Masses on Coney Island and Beyond,” is now open every day between noon and 6:00 p.m. through October 26. Come visit! Why an exhibition about William F. Mangels? Who was he, anyway? Well, though you may not recognize Mangels’s name, he made vital contributions to the great American … Read more
Almost four years ago, Green-Wood purchased the New York City landmark Weir Greenhouse. Work to convert it into a visitors center is proceeding apace; hopefully it will be open by the end of 2016. Soon after the purchase of the Weir Greenhouse, Green-Wood purchased the adjoining real estate of the Brooklyn Monument Company. The two … Read more
Sue Ramsey has done it again! Sue is one of Green-Wood’s Civil War Project’s wonderful–and tremendously dedicated–volunteer researchers. Retired from the Southern California Gas Company, she has been working her way, since 2005, through the now 5,200 volunteer-researched and written online Civil War biographies (thanks Susan Rudin for your incredible work translating all of this … Read more
Theresa LaBianca started working at Green-Wood Cemetery in 1977 as an administrative assistant. She has just retired. In the almost 41 years she was at Green-Wood, Theresa did a lot of day-to-day work with Green-Wood’s records, helping it function as a cemetery. But it is clear that the best part of the work, as far … Read more
Last week, I was finishing up work on a book, “The Gallant Sims,” A Civil War Hero Rediscovered, to be published on November 1 by the Green-Wood Historic Fund (it should be for sale in Green-Wood’s online store right around that date), with funding from Furthermore Grants in Publishing, a program of the J.M. Kaplan … Read more
September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest day in American history. At the Battle of Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia collided with the Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of Major General George McClellan. By the end of the day, 23,000 American soldiers, North and South, … Read more
Benjamin Feldman is one of Green-Wood’s most ardent enthusiasts. For many years, Ben spent a good deal of his free time cataloguing Green-Wood’s collections. Inspired by Green-Wood stories, he wrote Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics and The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Antebellum New York (2007) (the story of the Dr. Harvey Burdell and Emma Cunningham, … Read more
