By Vanessa Carney, Archival Intern
Title: Index to Interments, 1840-1899
Extent: 32.0 Boxes
Arrangement:
1. Primary: Alphabetical vowel tabs
2. Secondary: Chronological by year, with the occasional exception
Within each tab, last names are grouped—but not listed—alphabetically. For example, “Armstrong” may appear before “Abbot" on the same page. Interment numbers are generally listed in ascending order per tab with large gaps in between; one can assume that Interment numbers increase as time passes.
This collection also presents two different tabular formats:
• Standard Entries - These entries feature two columns of names and lot numbers per page, with no column headers. Years appear in the margins and are often difficult to spot. The vast majority of entries across all three series follow this format.
• Detailed Entries - These entries feature several column headers indicating date of interment, name, number, residence, age, nativity [neighborhood, city, or country of origin], lot number, and diseas Only Series 2: Book A-D and Series 3: Book C include this format, which supports the theory that pages from the former were placed into the latter.
Subjects: Disease Outbreaks--history--New York City, Mortality--New York (State)--New York--History--19th century.
Languages: English
Series 2 appears to be an imprecise copy of Series 1 and may be a relic of Green-Wood's former Manhattan office, where they may have attempted to keep duplicate records. While the two series share many identical entries, many others are incongruous or missing. Expect them to differ in the following ways:
• Series 1 typically spans 1840–1884, whereas Series 2 spans 1841–1880.
• Names are often shown with different internment years, usually one year off
• Names are not always in the same order, though they may be listed near each other within a given year
• Names are often missing
• Interment numbers are often one or two digits off
• While entries at the beginning and ends of tabs generally align, the interior pages show entire years where names don’t align at all
This collection encompasses three series of ledgers outlining interments within The Green-Wood Cemetery from roughly 1840‒1899. Most entries consist of standard names and interment numbers; however, two books (Series 2: Book A–D and Series 3: Book C ) exhibit additional details similar to those found in the Chron books, such as the deceased’s place of birth and whether they suffered from disease, which may be useful to those researching public health, mortality rates, or ethnicities.
PURPOSE AND USAGE: These ledgers served as a cross-reference for the Chron books. If a visitor came bearing only the name of the interred, employees could use these books to locate the interment number, which allowed them to find a more comprehensive listing in the Chron books. Additionally, interment numbers can give a general idea of the timeframe of the interment (e.g., Numbers in the 200,000s indicate burials from the late 1880s, roughly.)
CONDITION: Earlier volumes are wrapped in modern brown wrapping paper covering original leather covers, which are significantly dried out and thus affected by red rot. Many inside covers present a label from the manufacturer pasted onto a gray, green, and red patterned background. Many interior pages remain attached to the spine, presenting significant wear, discoloration, and often mold stains along the edges. Some pages are ripped and torn. Later volumes retain their original cloth covers and printed labelling. Cloth covers are intact and significantly stained around the spines and edges, with some fraying at the corners, spines, and bindings.
Disease Outbreaks--history--New York City
Mortality--New York (State)--New York--History--19th century.
Repository: The Green-Wood Cemetery
Related Materials: These books were probably replaced by the name index cards, which the cemetery began using in the early 1900s. The cards are also alphabetical by name, but they contain far more information than the books, which were created so that employees could locate interment information if a visitor/customer only had the name of the interred. The employee could use these ledgers to locate the interment number, then use that number to find the listing in the Chron books. (Source: Finding aid for Accession #013-2015 by Shirra Rockwood and Lisa M. Novak, which has now been incorporated into this collection.)
Processing Information: Accession # 002-2018
This series is an imprecise copy of Series 1, generally beginning in 1841 and ending four years earlier, in 1880 instead of 1884. Several other differing aspects of this series suggest it is an outlier from Series 1 and 3:
• The years are often anachronistic, whereas the other series are always chronological.
• It is covered in leather and wrapped in paper, whereas the others are covered in cloth.
• It contains Detailed Entries of medical and demographic information (Book A-D), whereas the others do not, except for Series 3: Book C, which seems to contain pages torn from this book.
Condition: Severely damaged.
This book is an imprecise copy of Series 1: A-D. In addition to years appearing anachronistically (particularly within the A tabs) it presents several organizational anomalies:
• It is missing Tabs Ca, Ce, Ci, which were later found inside Series 3: Box C, where they currently reside. Tab Co is also missing entries from 1840 through June of 1846 and 1852 through much of 1854.
• This is the only book in this series to feature both Standard and Detailed Entries, the latter of which which includes medical and demographic information. All tabs except Tab A feature this format. Examples of diseases noted include scarlet fever, consumption, whooping cough, and cholera, among others.
Note that when the format changes from Detailed to Standard in each tab, anachronism results: The years revert back to earlier dates. For instance, the Detailed entries on tab Co end in 1850, but the following Standard entry starts with 1841. Since this book is a copy of another, the author may have added these entries retroactively, after 1850.
