Thursday, August 15, 2013

ANNOUNCING NEW DATABASE: THE STATE STREET BURIAL GROUNDS - ALBANY, NY

The following is from the Troy Irish Genealogy website.

  ANNOUNCING NEW DATABASE: THE STATE STREET BURIAL GROUNDS - ALBANY, NY

A new data base on the Troy Irish Genealogy website - www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ identifies the re-interments from the State Street Burial Grounds, in Albany, New York.

To see this new data base, click on PROJECTS and then click on STATE STREET BURIAL GROUNDS.

The State Street Burying Grounds, was opened by the City of Albany in 1801 to alleviate the overcrowded churchyards and private family graveyards.  It was located at the eastern end of what is now Washington Park in Albany.

Most churches were given their own sections of the Burial Grounds and interments from previous church grounds and in the city cemetery at State and Eagle Streets were moved here.  Within a few decades, however, the State Street Burying Ground was already in decline.  The graveyard was extremely overcrowded and suffered from neglect and vandalism.

In 1866, Albany's Common Council addressed the matter of the Burying Grounds and passed a resolution to close it.  All graves in it would be removed to the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York.  Burials in the Catholic Grounds Section, however, were moved to St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands, New York.

This new data base identifies the re-interments from the following 15 different sections of the Burial Grounds:

Rural Reformed Protestant Dutch Church
St. Peter?s Episcopal Church
First Presbyterian Church
Second Presbyterian Church
Third Presbyterian Church
United Presbyterian Church
African Methodist Episcopal Church
Garretson Station Methodist Episcopal Church
Baptist Church
Albany Society of Friends
Ebenezer Lutheran Church
Catholic Church Grounds
First Universalist Church
Methodist Episcopal Church
Potter's Field

In addition to the 15 separate files of data, there is a master list for ALL of the re-interments as part of this new data base.

The data base covers 3,685 names and a number of the records may include age, date of birth, date of death, place of birth, names of parents, spouses, etc.  As many of the middle names listed for individuals are more than likely to be "family surnames" these "likely surnames" have been included in the index as a cross reference. Also, in those instances where the parent?s names of a married woman were mentioned in the comments section, a cross reference to the parents surname was also included in the index.

Hopefully, this new data base, like all the other records series on the TIGS website will be useful to genealogy researchers.

Regards,

Bill McGrath
TIGS Project Coordinator
Clifton Park, NY

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