As Decoration Day approaches one naturally takes to thinkin’ of graves and Greenwood–the finest City of Graves in this or any other country, where even death looks beautiful.
By the way, there is a serio-comic reminiscence connected with the early history of this picturesque cemetery. Greenwood was originally a part of Gowanus, and old Stephen Whitney used to say what a splendid place it might some day make for a cemetery for the great city of New York. After a while Henry E. Pierrepont got seized with the same idea, and bein’ a practical man, he carried it out along with Douglass and other rich men.
Pierrepont took a special trip to Europe to examine the foreign burial places, and then came back with a determination to beat ‘em all. And in some respects he succeeded. For in many points–location, for one–Greenwood surpasses any other burial ground in the world.
But the chief difficulty Pierrepont and his assistants had was in gettin’ the ground, not from the Bergen, Wyckoff and other Dutch families, to whom the greater part of it belonged, but from the smaller farmers who owned bits of land here and there which Pierrepont wanted.
It is always more trouble in proportion to do or get a small thing than a big thing, and so it was in this case. The fifty acre farmers were willing enough to sell, but the five acre farmers were the deuce. They couldn’t for the life of ‘em understand what Pierrepont wanted so many acres to make a graveyard of, and at last they made up their minds that Pierrepont was only pretendin’ to want to make a graveyard, but that his real object, for which the cemetery pretense was a blind, was to hunt for buried treasure hidden there by Kidd or other pirates in the long ago. Hitting upon this explanation, the small Dutch farmers refused to part with their land, except at such exorbitant rates as would indeed have covered any hidden treasures that might have been found there.
A few of the farmers rejected this secret treasure theory, and made up their minds that Pierrepont was crazy, out of his head. “Daft Pierrepont,” some of ‘em called him, and that term annoyed Pierrepont exceedin’ly. He didn’t like to be considered crazy, even by Dutch farmers.
But at last he outlived these prejudices and foolish notions, and managin’ to get the principal owners of the land to take the most of their pay in cemetery stock. And then Pierrepont got control of enough land to start the present Greenwood.
The first man buried in Greenwood was John Hanna, and his grave lies on Ocean avenue. Among the many graves that have reminiscences associated with ‘em are those of Horace Greeley, Harry Palmer, the theatrical manager, which lies near [William J.] Florence, the actor’s, lot, and which is visited by theatrical people constantly; and the grave of Foster, the car-hook murderer, who killed Putnam in a Broadway car. For ten years or so this last grave has been visited every year by some mysterious female, who strews it with flowers.
But, perhaps of all the graves in all of Greenwood the one grave that has the noblest and most interestin’ history is that on which a monument stands erected by Harry Howard, the well-known ex-chief of the old Volunteer Fire Department, to the memory of a lady who was kind to him.
Harry Howard is an old man now, but he was chief engineer of the old Fire Department for three years, and was a tip-top fireman and very popular, as well as efficient. He was for seven years assistant engineer under Chief Alfred Carson, and his business and pride all these years was to get to a fire just before Carson did, and so be in Supreme command till Carson came.
Harry is about sixty or sixty-one years old now, and has probably been connected longer and more prominently with the old Fire Department than any other man now livin’ in New York. His life story is somewhat peculiar. He does not know who or what his parents were, but was adopted, as a waif and stray, by a kind-hearted old lady, who took good care of him and procured him his name by an act of Legislature–like Frank Leslie. He made fire department matters, as it were, his specialty, and knew everythin’ about ‘em practically. But one day, while chief engineer and runnin’ to a fire on Second street, he was suddenly stricken down, though only thirty-five years of age, by a fit of paralysis, which left him a cripple.
But his head is all right and his heart; for when the kind old lady died who had been so good to him–a more than mother–Harry Howard came to the front like a true, big-souled man. He couldn’t let the dear good woman pass away from earth to heaven without commemoratin’ her virtues in some tangible way. So he ordered a fine monument–one of the very handsomest of its kind in Greenwood–to be placed over her grave, and then he mortgaged his salary for years to the artist to pay for the monument he ordered.
He was gettin’ a moderate salary with the Department of Public Works; but with rare self-denial and still rarer gratitude, he put by every month over three-fourths of his salary to pay for the monument, livin’ humbly, contentedly and quietly on the remaining fourth. Harry never talks about this monument himself, but I believe from my soul it is one of those things that his friends ought to talk and write about for him–one of those things which ought to be made public for the sake of human nature and the public good.
And hereafter, when Harry Howard, the fireman, is forgotten, the memory of Harry Howard, the grateful man and true gentleman, will be cherished in high esteem by all whose esteem is worth the havin’.
[Editor’s notes: The woman who adopted Harry was Sarah Charlesworth Howard, born in Ireland, died 1856. She also had a daughter (adopted?), named Harriet Howard.]
