The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go?

The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go? Benjamin Behrman, my 3rd Great-grandfather, died June 23rd, 1859 in New York City, New York. According to the entry in the death records, he was buried in the cemetery at 88th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenue.

23

Behrman Benjamin

Meningitis

49

491 Canal St

Prussia

88th St bet 3 + 4 Ave

The cemetery no longer exists today as it has long been cemented over with large buildings covering the area from corner to corner. What became of the cemetery? And more importantly, what happened to the bodies that were interred there? A newspaper clipping was found in the Municipal Archives dated April 10, 1958 entitled “LOWER EAST SIDE Churches & Synagogues” by George Freedman. George was Director of New Era Club Lecture Forum and wrote a column on Jewish cemeteries in Manhattan. He wrote, “.. Other congregations had cemeteries in Manhattan, i.e. 105th Street and Central Pak, 88th Street and Madison Avenue, 89th Street and Six Avenue (Central Park), 32nd Street and Sixth Avenue, and 45th Street and Sixth Avenue. These other congregations removed these bodies and reburied them in Queens.” This was the first indication that the bodies were moved. No background information about the cemetery could be found relating to this article, George Freedman or New Era Club Lecture Forum. I then wrote to the New York Historical Society who referenced Carolee Inskeep’s book, The Graveyard Shift: A Family Historian’s Guide to New York City Cemeteries (Orem, UT: Ancestry, 2000). In it, she described the Jewish cemeteries which once existed in Manhattan on 32nd, 89th, and 105th Streets and on Madison Avenue in the 1870’s. Beginning in the 1850’s, which brought soaring real-estate prices and legislation restricting further interments in Manhattan, remains were moved from those burial places to new cemeteries in Queens and Brooklyn. Consequently, Bayside, Beth El, and other Queens cemeteries contain the graves of people who died years before the cemeteries opened. The next logical step was to contact these cemeteries to see if they had any burial records for Benjamin Behrman. The only problem, as you will read later on, is that I had previously sent letters to each and every Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn and Queens. (See below) In a section headed “Cemeteries and Churchyards for Future Editions,” Inskeep lists cemeteries “…not included in this edition of ‘The Graveyard Shift.’ In some cases, they were omitted for lack of available information; in others, for lack of evidence that they even existed. Every attempt will be made to include them in future editions of this book.” Two such burial places are: −

Jewish Cemetery at East 88th Street and Madison Avenue, Manhattan

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The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go? − Jewish Cemetery at East 89th Street and Madison Avenue, Manhattan Regarding the cemetery at 89th Street near Madison, Inskeep wrote, “Congregation Ansche-Chesed, which became Temple Beth-El in 1852, used this burial ground for about fifteen years (1839-1855). In February of 1880, its trustees announced that the cemetery was going to be removed. Any remains that were not claimed by family, and interred privately, were taken to Beth-El Cemetery about March 8, 1880. At that time there were only about fifty-three gravestones.” She sites a New York Times article of February 28, 1880 Page 3, entitled “Reinterring the Jewish Dead,”– as her source. While the article only referenced the Jewish Cemetery of 89th Street, I assumed it may have relevance to the one on 88th Street as well. I exchanged several emails with Carolee who was excited to see additional confirmation that this cemetery did, in fact, exist. She wrote, “You may be wondering why a downtown temple would have buried its members so far uptown. In 1851, NYC forbade burials south of 86th Street. Most congregations began searching for cemetery lots outside the city limits well before the 1851 law was passed - and back in the 1840s, 86th Street was a long trip out of town. By 1887, when Beth Israel-Bikur Cholim moved to 72nd Street, the Upper East Side was highly developed. Sale of its valuable cemetery land probably helped finance the move.” In the meantime, I contacted the Suffolk County and New York State Libraries for information, however, they were not able to add new details. They did check the indexes to deaths in both the New York Herald and the New York Evening Post, hoping to find mention of the location of Benjamin Behrman’s funeral, but they were unsuccessful. I also contacted the New York State, Division of Cemeteries, but they suggested some of the same resources I had already been references. At Carolee’s suggestion, I changed the focus from cemeteries to synagogues to see if they had any records documenting the reinterments of the bodies from the 88th Street cemetery. The first one was Temple Beth-El (formerly Congregation Ansche-Chesed) which was mentioned in the article. I located the death records for 18351867 and the cemetery records for 1878-1891 from the American Jewish Archives. They did not contain any information on any Behrmans. The synagogue themselves did not have any additional records. There were not a lot of synagogues in New York City in the 1850s, actually 17 according to Trow's 1859 – 1860 New York City Directory. While I did not know Benjamin’s affiliation, I did know that he lived at 491 Canal Street when he died in 1859 and at 230 Canal Street prior to that. I mapped out the location of each synagogue to find out which ones were the closest to his residences. Beth Hamidrash, Beth Elohem,

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The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go? and Beth Israel / Beth Israel Bikkur Cholim (“Visiting the Sick”) were the ones closest to 230 Canal Street while Shaari Tephila and Beth Tephila were near 491 Canal Street. Carolee surmised that he was probably a member of Congregation Beth Israel, located at the corner of White and Centre Streets. According to King's Handbook of New York (1890), "The Beth Israel-Bikur Cholim synagogue, in a fine neighborhood, at Lexington Avenue and 72d Street, is a spacious and commodious temple, with a rich and vivid interior. The society was formed in 1859, by the union of the Congregation Beth Israel and the Society Bikur Cholim; and worshipped in White Street and then in Chrystie Street until 1887, when it joined the great up-town movement of the churches. It is one of the foremost of the orthodox Jewish congregations." Bikur Cholim was located at the corner of Pearl Street and Centre Street, a few blocks south of Beth Israel. When the two congregations merged, they apparently used the Beth Israel synagogue, then moved to Chrystie Street, then moved to 72nd Street. It appears that Beth Israel-Bikur Cholim is no longer at 72nd Street and Lexington Avenue. It may have disbanded, moved (with the German-Jewish immigrants that once populated that neighborhood), or merged with another synagogue. I contacted the current Congregation Beth Israel at 347 West 34th Street in New York City, but they did not have any information. I then accessed the Burial Societies in the New York Metro Area database hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York at http://www.jgsny.org/searchcity.htm. It maintains a list of groups that purchased plots in various cemeteries in New York City and surrounding areas. Relevant to Bikur Cholim, it includes: Society Name

Cemetery Name

Notes

Society Type

Congregation Bikor Cholim (post) Congregation Ahavath Achem Bikur Cholim Inc. (map) Bikur Cholim U'kadisha (cem) Bikur Cholim Society Congregation Bikur Cholim (post)

Bayside Beth Israel Memorial Park Union Field (Ridgewood, NY) Union Field (Ridgewood, NY) Washington (B'klyn)

Gate 12 Block 64 Block 49 Block 25 Section 1, Post 31

Synagogue Synagogue Landsmanshaft All Others Synagogue

So these societies mapped to Bayside, Beth Israel Memorial Park, Union Field, and Washington cemeteries, each of which I had contacted previously – nothing new to follow up with. I wrote to the other synagogues nearby the addresses, but neither Temple Shaaray Tefila nor Congregation Shearith Israel had any Behrman information. The American Jewish Archives had general records for Congregation Shaaray Tefila for 1835 – 1908, but nothing about burials. Several years earlier, in January 1997, before I had even found the death record for Benjamin, I decided to generate a personalized letter to each of the cemeteries in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. They included: Acacia, Bayside, Beth El (New Union Field), Beth Olom, Hungarian Union Field, Knollwood Park, Linden Hill (Ahavath Chesed / Central Synagogue), Machpelah, Maimonides, Mokom Sholom, Montefiore, Mt. Carmel, Mt. Carmel (New), Mt. Hebron, Mt. Judah, Mt. Lebanon, Mt. Neboh, Mt. Zion, Salem Field (Temple Emanu-El), Shearith Israel, Washington, Cypress Hills, Maple Grove, and Union Field of Congregation Rodeph Shalom. I included a self-addressed, stamped-envelope to make their reply as simple as possible and heard from all of them. No record for Benjamin Behrman or his sons, Henry, Abram or Barnet. Regarding this, Carolee pointed out that I should have made the assumption that the cemeteries may not have recorded the individual interments from the 88th Street Jewish Cemetery, but rather made only one notation in their books as to who purchased the group plots for the entire mass re-interment. Next time I contact the cemeteries, I will ask them about this and then walk through the plots in search of the correct grave. In August 2000, I located the death record that was shown above and also found and visited the grave of his wife, Hannah Corn Behrman Vogel at Bayside Cemetery on Long Island, New York. She had remarried and

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The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go? Benjamin was not in the Vogel plot or areas surrounding it. I even asked the groundskeeper if he knew of any Behrman plots in the cemetery – he showed be two, neither which were Benjamin’s. In February 2001, I decided to revisit the idea of writing to each cemetery since now I knew when Benjamin died, that he had been buried in the Jewish cemetery on 88th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues in New York City, and that his body must have been re-interred at a later date to another nearby cemetery. I researched which cemeteries were the older ones assuming they would have had some relationship to the original one as well as the older congregations. I checked Genealogical Resources in the New York Metropolitan Area (New York City, NY: Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc., 1989). and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies Cemetery Project found at http://www.jewishgen.org/cemetery/northamerica/nyc.html on the Internet for clues. I then wrote back to Linden Hill, Beth El (New Union Field), and Beth El / Salem Fields Cemeteries.. Additionally, at someone else’s recommendation, I contacted the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City and the Grove Street Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey. Still no Benjamin. In reviewing my notes, I came back to yet another suggestion of Carolee Inskeep. She wrote, “One thing to keep in mind is that your family may have made a private removal. Ask yourself if anyone was in a position, financially, to do that. If so, which cemetery were they most likely to use?” Assuming they did in fact have money, and since he was not buried in the same plot as his wife, the obvious answer would be that he is buried in the plots with one of his children. Benjamin had five children. Henry (born 1850), Abram (born 1852), Barnet (born 1853), Rebecca (born 1855), and Augusta (born 1859). The only grave that has been located to date is Rebecca’s in the Hungarian Union Fields Cemetery and Benjamin is not buried with her. The death certificate of Henry’s wife, Rieke Behrman, notes that she was buried in Bayside Cemetery, but I was not been able to locate her grave when visiting there in August 2000. It is not known when the other brothers and sister died or where they were buried. That’s the next area of focus. So I will soon begin searching the Manhattan death indexes, year by year. And finally, my cousin Leslie Corn recently suggested that I track down the owners of the original cemetery plots through land deeds to determine who owned it. These may provide clues as to the congregation or group that Benjamin was affiliated with and therefore lead me to the cemetery where he was re-buried. At her recommendation, I contacted Steven W. Siegel, Director of the 92nd Street Y Buttenwieser Library and a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (New York) who is knowledgeable in this area. Many years ago he researched the New York County land records to identify the deeds for the various Jewish cemetery plot purchases in the 19th century. He had the following to contribute regarding them: Congregation Shaare Zedek, founded 1839, acquired two lots in 1840 on the south side of 88th Street west of 4th Avenue, specifically between 4th (now Park Avenue) and Madison Avenues. The land was sold in 1899. Shaare Zedek established Bayside Cemetery, which today is in horrible condition. Burial records for Bayside are incomplete. Congregation Rodeph Sholom, founded 1842, acquired in 1842 an adjoining lot to Shaare Zedek on the south side of 88th Street. The land was sold in 1862. Rodeph Sholom established Union Field Cemetery. He could not say definitively that Benjamin Behrman was buried in one of these two plots on 88th Street, but it is possible that the death register entry is erroneous as to the Avenues. As a follow-up, I will be reviewing the death register for 1856 to 1862 to see if there are any other Jewish-surnamed persons that were buried at 88th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenue. He continue with the following: Congregation Anshe Chesed, later Temple Beth El, in 1846 acquired eight lots on the south side of 89th Street west of 4th Avenue, between 4th and Madison Avenues. This land is one block north of the Shaare Zedek and Rodeph Sholom property. [Steven did not complete the research to determine what year the land was sold.] Anshe Chesed, founded 1828,

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The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88th Street in Manhattan: Where Did the Bodies Go? acquired its first cemetery plot in 1830 on the west side of 6th Avenue just north of 45th Street. [He does not know when it was sold.] He believes the 1880 newspaper article noted above is in error as to when the 89th Street property first came into use since the year 1839 is inconsistent with when the land was acquired. Beth Israel-Bikur Cholim was absorbed into today's Park Avenue Synagogue. The earliest cemeteries for the 19th-century synagogues are accounted for, as far as Steven can determine. While he is dubious about the existence of one on 88th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues, research in the land records would resolve whether there was such a plot. Carolee agrees that the address may be mistaken, noting that this section of Manhattan existed really only in the minds of the planners during the 1850s since most people lived well below 50th Street at that time. Such research is relatively easy because of a re-indexing project that was done in the early 20th century to locate on maps every prior deed and to list the conveyances chronologically. Two distinct block numbers are involved: the north side of 88th Street and the south side of 88th Street - between 3rd and 4th Avenues, today bisected by Lexington Avenue. So that too is next on my list to investigate. While I have researched a lot already towards this end, I am confident that soon I will find out what happened to Benjamin Behrman after his body was removed from the Jewish Cemetery. If you have any suggestions for finding Benjamin Behrman or have information about the old Jewish Cemetery that was located at 88th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Manhattan, New York, I would love to hear from you. About the Author Gary Palgon was a founding member and past President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia, Inc. He was born in Miami, Florida, and has lived in Atlanta, Georgia since 1990 working in the computer industry. In 1981, he began researching his family’s history, tracing over 2800 relatives as far back as 1740 on six continents. He has published four books about his family. His research has taken him throughout the United States and Israel and he spent two-weeks in Poland and Belarus (former U.S.S.R.) during the summer of 1994 visiting the towns of his ancestors. You can contact Gary by email at [email protected] by phone at 404-822-6280 or by mail at 2492 Madison Commons, Atlanta, GA 30360.

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