Private Absalom Bainbridge

The Albany Rural Cemetery has the graves of several hundred Civil War soldiers, both casualties and veterans.  Most, of course, served in the Union Army.  There are, however, several Confederate veterans buried here, too.

Private Absalom Bainbridge, Company B of the Virginia Rangers, was one of three Confederates who encountered President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth and his companion David Herold at Port Conway.  Bainbridge, along with his cousin, Mortimer Bainbridge Ruggles, and Private Willie Jett crossed the Rappahannock River with the fugitives and eventually helped them to find lodging at the home of tobacco farmer Richard Garrett.  Bainbridge left the Garrett farm before Federal troops arrived, surrounded Booth in the barn, and ultimately shot him.

Edited:  More on Bainbridge's encounter with Booth can be found here.

A native of Freedlands, Virginia, Bainbridge later moved to New York City and worked as an interior decorator for A.T. Stewart Dry Goods.

On May 31 1902, the fifty-four year old Absalom Bainbridge died of a stroke at 68 Charles Street, the Manhattam home of a lady friend named Harriet Hotaling.  He was buried in her family plot here on the South Ridge a few days later.

Gardener of The Albany Rural Cemetery

Advertisement from the back of Churchill's Guide Through The Albany Rural Cemetery ca. 1858.  (Click to enlarge)

Wife of John Lansing, Jr.

John Lansing, Jr. had quite an impressive career behind him when he left his New York City hotel to mail some letters on December 12, 1829.  The son of Albany silversmith Gerrit Lansing, he began as a teenaged law clerk in the years before the Revolution.  During the War, he served as a secretary to General Philip Schuyler before entering politics.  A delegate to the Constitutional Convention and member of the Continental Congress, his resume over the years would include several terms in the New York State Assembly, including two as Speaker.  From 1786 to 1790, he served as Mayor of Albany.  Later, he would serve as the State Chancellor and Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court  During the former, he used his own money to fund a survey of the Catskill and Helderberg Mountains.

In 1781, he married Cornelia Ray.  Born in Manhattan, she was the daughter of a New York City businessman who had sought safety for his family in Albany during the Revolution.  John and Cornelia had ten children, five died as children (including both sons).  Lansing Manor in North Blenheim, Schoharie County (now on the grounds of the New York Power Authority owned Blenheim-Gilboa Pumped Storage Power Project) was built by Lansing as a country home for his daughter, Frances and her husband John Sutherland in 1819.

On December 12, 1829, Lansing left the City Hotel in Manhattan.  He failed to keep a dinner appointment and was never seen again.  For years, conspiracy theories abounded about his disappearance.  It was assumed that he was murdered, but no body was ever found and theories pinned the crime on everyone from the Freemasons to medical students who wished to dissect and study the old gentleman's cadaver.  Other people speculated it was suicide or just an accidental drowning along the Manhattan waterfront (he was going to post a letter by a boat heading back to Albany).

It's unlikely the true story will ever be known.  Some years later, prominent Albany editor Thurlow Weed was given a letter which was said to detail Lansing's fate and name the responsible parties.  Weed was given the information on the condition that he would not reveal it until the persons named were all deceased.  However, when all the parties allegedly involved had died, Weed decided that too much time had passed and destroyed the letter!

Several printed sources state that Lansing's family later placed a cenotaph in his memory in the plot at the Albany Rural Cemetery.  Cornelia died in 1834 at the age of 76.  Records don't indicate where she was originally buried before the Rural Cemetery was established, but she was eventually be re-interred at the Rural Cemetery in the Rensselaer Westerlo family lot on the North Ridge.  Westerlo was the husband of Cornelia Lansing's daughter, Jane.

However, there is no cenotaph for John Lansing in the lot.  His name appears on his widow's headstone, but there is no separate stone for him.  I've gone over this lot several times and even carefully prodded a sunken area a few feet away from the headstone and the large Westerlo cross, but there is no sign of such a monument.  Unless, of course, it vanished as mysteriously as he did.

Sieprieana

This small white marble headstone on the North Ridge features an eroded, but charming carving of a little girl with angel wings and ribbon sash. She holds what may have been a floral wreath in one hand as she points to Heaven. 

Located in the Zweeres family plot, this stone has one of the most unusual names I've seen in the cemetery - Sieprieana.  And, on the burial index card, it's spelled Siepiunanna. Often, names that seem unusual at first glance aren't really that strange or different, but simply old-fashion spellings or names that are no longer in fashion.  This one, however, is quite unique.

She was the daughter of Dutch immigrants, John and Dina Zweeres,  and died from croup on March 13, 1889.  She was just weeks shy of her third birthday.  Her father was a bookkeeper and, at the time of Siepriama's death, the family lived at 338 South Pearl Street.

The Mayor

For most people raised in the Albany area, this name needs to explanation.  This granite headstone - one of a matching set in the large family plot - marks the grave of Erastus Corning 2nd, the man who served as Mayor of Albany for over four decades. 

For anyone too young to remember Mayor Corning or not originally from this area:  Wikipedia

Mayor Corning passed away on this date in 1983.  As memorable as his death was, the one incident that stands out in my memory was a hoax some weeks before.  I was ten and sitting at the kitchen table, playing with Colorforms.  The radio on the shelf above the sink was and, just as I carefully placed a roast turkey on a red sofa, the host interrupted the regular talk show to announce they had just received word that Mayor Corning had died at the hospital in Boston.  The news was stunning, but not unexpected and the host was quiet emotional.  But a few minutes later, the host announced the Mayor was still alive and I remember how angry he was that anyone would call in such a prank.

Almost Unknown

The name on this headstone is worn and practically illegible and the soldier's cap atop is eroding.  It marks the grave of one of several hundred Civil War soldiers - both casualties and veterans - buried in the Albany Rural Cemetery.

The Haunted Cemetery

For lovers of the paranormal, the Rural Cemetery is also the subject of local ghost stories.  There are stories of in old-fashioned pajamas seen drifting along the paths at twilight.  Some accounts describe them as elderly, others as young.  Other stories talk of glowing orbs appearing in photographs, unexplained shadows, and spectral black dogs.  It's also said that the old Superintendent's Cottage is now home to spirits and that an out-of-control horse which died after crashing headfirst into a monument  at the base of the North Ridge on an August evening in 1906.  The horse, which had been hitched to a buggy outside a church on Fifteenth Street in nearby Watervliet, had become spooked and bolted, dragging the buggy down Broadway and into the Cemetery.  The unfortunate horse, which was buried in the fields near the barns, is said to still gallop wildly along the Cemetery's roads.

Even the often-repeated urban legend of the hitchhiking girl has featured the Rural Cemetery as its setting,though the local variation of this tale is usually set at Graceland Cemetery on Delaware Avenue just south of Albany.  In more recent years, vague stories of mysterious black sport-utility vehicles (along with “men in black”) seen driving around the Cemetery have appeared on the internet.

I've personally experienced a few odd things in the Cemetery.  Several years ago, while walking in the general vicinity of the McIntyre plot, I felt someone gently, but firmly touch the back of my head.  I could rule out overhanging branches, mischievous friends, and such normal explanations.  On another occasion, I looked up from photographing a Revolutionary War veteran's headstone and saw - briefly, but clearly - a white figure walking towards me in the tall grass.  In the 1990s, while walking with my dog on the Middle Ridge just uphill from the DePeyser Douw vault, I heard a beautiful female voice humming a few bars of a melody just about a foot from me.  The tune repeated twice and I noticed my Pomeranian was staring intently in the direction that the voice came from.  There was no one nearby.