I just wanted to share this with you. We have many wonderful workers at Green-Wood, and many good people also. Yesterday, one of our employees got this e-mail from an acquaintance: I hope you are doing well! I wanted to send you a message, I know you work at Greenwood Cemetery so I wanted to … Read more
About ten years ago, I purchased a copy of Nehemiah Cleaveland’s walking tour of Green-Wood Cemetery, written about 1860. Cleaveland was Green-Wood’s first historian; I am its second. Now, I learned a few things from his walking tour about Green-Wood. I also learned some things about writing a walking tour. Never give instructions like this: … Read more
The Medal of Honor has been awarded only 3,446 times since it was first given in 1863. Just two weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Don Morfe. Don is a very active and dedicated volunteer with the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He spends a lot of time researching and going out to cemeteries, … Read more
A few nights ago, I was working my way through forms that have been filled out several months ago by our Green-Wood Historic Fund Civil War Project volunteers. The volunteers go through the cemetery’s chronological books, recording the vital statistics (name, place of birth, place of death, last residence, cause of death, and age at … Read more
Aaron Brashear is a great friend of Green-Wood Cemetery. And Green-Wood pays this friendship back by providing Aaron with an endless array of photographic opportunities. Aaron is at Green-Wood in snow storms, wind storms, spring and fall, shooting photographs, then shooting some more. He recently posted the photograph above on Flickr. It is in the … Read more
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I visited two sculptures that relate very much to the De Witt Clinton bronze, by Henry Kirke Brown, that is at Green-Wood Cemetery. My first stop was in the Smithsonian’s History Museum, where I visited Horatio Greenough’s sculpture of George Washington. It is really quite fascinating–a bare-chested “Father … Read more
It has been a mystery we’ve been trying to solve for some time now. We knew that the grave of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, America’s first internationally-acclaimed classical composer and pianist, had been adorned, soon after his death, with a marble angel. We had photographs of it–from the 19th century, even from as late as 1930 … Read more
Whenever I visit Washington, D.C., I try to visit my favorite museums there: the National Portrait Gallery, National Building Museum, the American Art Museum, and the National Museum of American History. Sometimes I find “old friends,” items I’ve seen many times, on display; sometimes I come across things I’ve never seen before. During my visit … Read more
In the early years of our Civil War Project, circa 2003, we started Volunteer Research Days, in which our Historic Fund Volunteers came to the cemetery conference room one Saturday every month or so to search the cemetery records for information that might result in the identification of Civil War veterans who are interred at … Read more
I’ve been wandering Green-Wood Cemetery for almost 25 years. Yet, I have never seen this monument before. It really is unusual–I’ve never seen anything like it in any cemetery. Thanks to Frank Morelli, supervisor of our Restoration and Preservation Program, who found this gravestone depicting a baby carriage. Quite a find!