The Roslyn Cemetery:
Remembrance Of Things Past By Mike Adams
Y
ou can tell a lot about a community by how it treats its dead. Roslyn is no exception. The Roslyn Cemetery, nestled on the border of Greenvale and East Hills near the Nassau County Museum of Art and the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center, is as much a product of its time and age as anything in the community. Founded in 1861 in the wake of the Rural Cemetery Act, the burial grounds were one of many dug into the countryside surrounding New York City in response to an increasing shortage of space. The cemetery and the adjoining Roslyn Presbyterian Church were nearly alone on the landscape when they came into being, but that’s not the case anymore. Now they’re sandwiched in between a set of railroad tracks and Northern Boulevard, with power lines looming just overhead. But a strange thing happens within those walls: despite the modern world that beckons just outside, the cemetery is an oddly calm place, a plot of rural peace sectioned off from sprawling chaos. On a sunny day, when the light peaks through the branches of the mighty trees that dot the place, it’s downright beautiful. Death is an uncomfortable reality lurking at the end of all our lives. Cemeteries can be just as uncomfortable, since they embody that inescapable truth. But the Roslyn Cemetery is much more than a holding place; it’s a time capsule for the community, a history of the people who called this place home, told in so many stones. There’s a perceptible shift in demographics as the dates on the graves move later and later. The oldest stones rest atop members of some of Roslyn’s oldest families. The Kirbys, the Smiths, the Tabers and the Remsens; the same names appear again and again, often with worndown engravings that are just faintly visible. As the 20th century makes
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ROSLYN NEWS MAGAZINE
A statue of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s son Lionel stands near her grave. (Photo by Mike Adams)
