The Old Jewish Cemetery on 88 Street in Manhattan: Where Did The
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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 49 491 Canal St Prussia Meningitis 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 Page 1 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 re- interments 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 1835- 1867 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, Page 2 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) Bayside Gate 12 Synagogue Congregation Ahavath Achem Bikur Cholim Inc. (map) Beth Israel Memorial Park Block 64 Synagogue Bikur Cholim U'kadisha (cem) Union Field (Ridgewood, NY) Block 49 Landsmanshaft Bikur Cholim Society Union Field (Ridgewood, NY) Block 25 All Others Congregation Bikur Cholim (post) Washington (B'klyn) Section 1, Post 31 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.