Moravia Union Cemetery - Dry Creek Cemetery, Moravia New York

Date added: October 24, 2023 Categories: New York Cemetery

Looking west from northeast corner (1993)

The Moravia Union Cemetery is Moravia's earliest community burial ground and contains the graves of many of the village's first settlers and leading citizens. The cemetery is distinguished by its relatively great age and its isolated, rural setting.

The settlement of Moravia began in 1789 with the arrival of John Stoyell from Connecticut. Stoyell was followed in the 1790s and 1800s by additional settlers from Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and Vermont. The First Congregational Church Society was organized in 1806 and became the first religious institution established in Moravia. The transplanted New England church exerted considerable influence in the early affairs of the village. In 1806, the church society purchased land for a cemetery from Moses Little at a site approximately one-half mile south of the village. The first recorded burial in the new cemetery occurred in 1807. During the next two decades, additional Protestant denominations became established in the community and at an undetermined date prior to 1859, management of the cemetery was taken over by the Moravia Union Cemetery Association, implying that the operation of the cemetery had become a multi-denominational responsibility. The Association purchased additional property and made unspecified improvements to the cemetery.

Early burials in the cemetery include the grave of John Locke, a Revolutionary War veteran from Connecticut who in 1807, according to his headstone inscription, "died with the wound of a knife...while butchering a hog." Other early settlers and leading citizens buried in the cemetery include Zadoc Cady, tavern owner, Daniel Goodrich, builder of the woolen mill where President Millard Fillmore was apprenticed, David Wright, Moravia's first school teacher, and an early storekeeper and mason, and Reverend John Ercanbrack, Moravia's first Methodist pastor. Although many of the extant headstones would indicate that burials occurred in rows extending in a generally north to south orientation, James A. Wright's Historical Sketches of Moravia, 1791-1918, states that "the grounds were never properly prepared, and graves have been made without regard to regularity or space." The design of headstones from the 1807-1863 are typical of this period in Central New York and appear to reflect the New England origins of the first generations of settlers. Many of these stones feature finely-carved lettering and well-preserved funerary motifs of the period carved in delicate lines, stippling, or low-relief.

On July 21, 1863, heavy rains resulted in the flooding of area streams including Dry Creek, the stream immediately adjacent to the cemetery. Dry Creek became choked with torrents of water and debris and late in the morning it rose above its banks and began to undermine the western edge of the cemetery. According to Wright, at least 13 coffins or bodies were washed out and carried downstream, including that of Lieutenant George C. Stoyell, buried only months earlier. The remains of six individuals, including Stoyell, were recovered and reburied in a less vulnerable area of the cemetery. The incident prompted community leaders to immediately organize a new cemetery association charged with the task of securing a site for the construction of a new and better-protected cemetery. A hill northeast of the village was selected and purchased by the newly chartered Indian Mound Cemetery Association and subsequently developed in the style of mid-nineteenth century "rural cemeteries." Thereafter, most Moravians were buried in the new cemetery, although occasional burials continued in the old cemetery as late as 1940. In 1886, the Moravia Cemetery Association transferred title to the old cemetery to the Village of Moravia.

The twentieth-century history of the cemetery is sketchy, but according to Wright's 1918 account, the cemetery was described as "wretched" and undesirably located and that "grass and weeds have often covered the entire enclosure." Logging activity reportedly took place in and around the cemetery in the 1950s, and caused damage to an unknown number of headstones. A heap of broken stones in the northeast corner of the cemetery may relate to this incident. During the nation's bicentennial in 1976, a commemorative area for Moravia's veterans was established consisting of 17 military monuments honoring veterans of the Revolution and the Civil War buried in the cemetery. Early records indicate that as many as 29 veterans may have at one time been buried in the cemetery. Currently, maintenance in the cemetery is limited to mowing, performed as a community service by the maintenance staff of the adjacent Fillmore Glen State Park. Additional research and restoration initiatives are being planned by the Society for Historic Moravia.

Site Description

The Moravia Union Cemetery occupies a three-acre site near the east bank of Dry Creek adjacent to the south boundary of the village. The site is roughly trapezoidal in form and is approximately 700 feet in length and 250 feet in width. The south and west sides of the cemetery are situated at the edge of a bank which slopes abruptly downward to the flats adjacent to Dry Creek. The north and east sides of the cemetery are roughly defined by trees and brush which separate the cemetery from adjacent fields.

The cemetery is approached along the south edge of the site by way of an unpaved drive which ascends from the flats adjacent to the creek.

The cemetery, opened in 1807, is believed to contain the graves of approximately 350 individuals. Approximately 180 headstones and monuments remain standing. The majority of the markers consist of early to mid-nineteenth-century marble, sandstone, or slate slabs with incised inscriptions and decoration. Several mid-nineteenth-century obelisks are present and a small number of late nineteenth and early twentieth century granite monuments are present. The majority of the graves are arranged in rows running north to south with headstone inscriptions facing west. A commemorative veterans section in the southeast corner of the cemetery dates from 1976 and includes 17 military headstones memorializing the burial of Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans from Moravia. A flagpole is placed near the center of this grouping. At the northeast corner of the cemetery, a heap of broken nineteenth-century headstones has been deposited, apparently related to damage sustained in the cemetery in the 1950s. The cemetery includes a variety of mature hardwood and evergreen trees but no formal landscape elements.

A number of early headstones in the cemetery exhibit fine stone carving in the tradition of New England funerary art of the early nineteenth centuries. Typical decorative motifs include funeral urns, drapery, rising suns, grape vines, weeping willow trees and geometric patterns carved in low relief. Names and dates of birth and death remain legible in most instances. Approximately half of the early headstones feature lengthy funerary verses popular during the period.