Ye Olde Burying Ground of Flushing

Between 164th and 165th Streets across from Flushing Cemetery on 46th Avenue, a clump of green marks a very unusual smaller cemetery. For decades this was a public park with a playground fronted by a concrete sitting area with park benches called Martin’s Field. The area had been a park since 1914, and was named for conservationist Evertt P. Martin in 1931. The playground was built in 1936 under the auspices of the Works Progress Adminstration.

However, for decades prior to that the field was used as a burial ground for African and Native Americans as well as some white area settler. It had been established as a cemetery as long ago as 1822, according to the Queens Gazette:

The land was initially a burial site for victims of plagues such as smallpox, cholera and yellow fever. From 1822 until the 1870s neighborhoods in Queens were greatly affected by these illnesses until a centralized water system was introduced. Purchased by the Town of Flushing in 1840, the site is home to approximately 800 to 1,000 individuals buried over several decades, the majority of whom were African-Americans and Native Americans. There were also a number of poor whites who, along with wealthier residents, died during the cholera and smallpox epidemics in 1840, 1844, 1857 and 1867, buried as well. Their bodies were considered too contaminated for a proper churchyard burial. Half of those buried are children five years old or younger.

According to activist Mandingo Tshaka, the plots were indiscriminately arranged, often, unmarked and as shallow as six inches below the surface. The last burial was in 1898, the year of the city’s consolidation.”

The future goal is for the NYC Parks Department to install an obelisk and four small headstones in the three-and-one-half acre park that will replace the original tombstones that were removed by the WPA in the 1930s. The tombs would serve as an everlasting reminder that the land is indeed a cemetery.

From the Queens Gazette:

The original tombstones were those of Willie, son of Alfred and Fanny Curry who died at four years of age in 1874 and George H. Bunn, who died Jan. 13, 1887 at the age of 17 and Alfred E. Bunn who died at three years of age on Apr. 7, 1876. The final tombstone belonged to the grave of James Bunn, who died on Aug. 3, 1890 at the age of 53. All tombstones were made of marble and listed as being in good condition in an Oct. 10, 1919 survey conducted by the Queens Topographical Bureau that listed the land as the ‘Colored Cemetery of Flushing.’ 

Recently the grounds have been protected against vandalism by wire fences surrounding the pathways. Names of Indian tribes are embossed in the sidewalks.