From plaque

PUT CORNERS BURIAL GROUND

The Put Corners Burial Ground is one of New Paltz's most important historic sites. It is the final resting place for more than 120 residents who died in the 19th century. The cemetery served the community for over seventy-five years. The earliest grave from 1801 belongs to Maria Van Wagenen. The last two from 1880 belong to Henry J. Freer and Cornelius Polhamus.

A Busy Hamlet

This quiet plot of ground lay in the hamlet of Put Corners, an active community of homes, small shops, and nearby farms. Lying between New Paltz village and the hamlet of Ohioville, it encompassed the area of North and South Put Corners, and the eastern portion of Route 299. Napoleon Purdy gave the area its name, derived from Putnam County, from where he had moved. Around 1858, Purdy built a hotel, at 1 South Put Corners Road, and it became a center of entertainment, lavish parties, and dance lessons. Though a fire destroyed the structure in 1874, Purdy constructed a new hotel in Put Corners.

A Cemetery Of Its Time

The Put Corners graveyard typified the many small burial places of the colonial era and early 19th century. At the time, Americans chose to bury the dead in places close to their homes, in churchyards, town commons, family plots, or burial grounds situated near the crossroads of hamlets and villages, with stately yet simple headstones.

A Historic Landmark

Put Corners Burial Grounds is a designated historic landmark of the Town of New Paltz, protected in perpetuity. Historic Huguenot Street owns and maintains the graveyard. The cemetery is the resting place of generations of Put Corners families and remains as a hallowed burial ground. It is a treasured vestige of the thriving community who lived here.

Among those buried here are individuals and families with ties to Put Corners and the village of New Paltz. These residents include descendants of the earliest town families, who had been in the area for generations, such as the Terwilliger, Bevier, Deyo, and Freer families. The most common family name in the cemetery is Johnson, with 19 interred, many of them children.

Put Corners cemetery offers evidence of an era when life expectancy was much shorter. Many children succumbed in childbirth or due to illnesses and epidemics. Of the approximate 120 people buried in this cemetery, at least 49 were children under the age of 10; many in their first year of life.

Mary York Bevier, for example, lost her husband, Isaac Bevier, and four a of her children in the year 1820. She went on to live another 39 years, passing away in 1859 at the age of 73.

As the 19th century progressed, concerns around the nation grew about public health, crowdedness, and the cost of maintaining graveyards. Ultimately, a rural cemetery movement organized and advocated for larger, formal, beautifully designed, serene, and picturesque graveyards to bury and honor the dead. By the last quarter of the 19th century, townspeople no longer made use of the Put Corners burial ground. The New Paltz Rural Cemetery, on Plains Road, chartered in 1861, had its origins in this movement.

An Enduring Resting Place

Similar to what occurred in many hamlets in the United States, transportation advances and the surrounding area's population growth changed life in Put Corners. The most dramatic change was the construction of the New York State Thruway in the 1950s. The main street of Put Corners was cut off from the rest of town and became Terwilliger Lane. Put Corners burial ground survived the transformation, albeit it for a time as a place many may not even have known existed because of its hidden location in a busy business district.

A Historic Landmark

Put Corners Burial Grounds is a designated historic landmark of the Town of New Paltz, protected in perpetuity. Historic Huguenot Street owns and maintains the graveyard. The cemetery is the resting place of generations of Put Corners families and remains as a hallowed burial ground. It is a treasured vestige of the thriving community who lived here.