632 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

was populated by interments for a long series of years, from the Forsyth, Allen, Willett, Seventh and Second street Methodist churches in its vicinity. Not long ago, they manifested a desire to remove the remains, which were rapidly accumulating to the detriment of the living, into some suburban cemetery. The Cypress Hill Cemetery Association, thereupon, with praiseworthy generosity, donated a commodious tract of land for their benefit. The disinterment and removal were effected at the expense of the church, and the dead were transferred to their new resting place. As far as was feasible, the identity of the remains was preserved and the same stones which originally marked their graves, stand above them now. The greater portion of the mouldering ashes, however, being undistinguishable, was placed together in large vaults. A monument of Italian marble, twentyfour feet high, with granite base, erected by the five churches, whose dead are here buried, appropriately commemorates these sacred remains. The Soldier’s plot is beautifully located, and four thousand soldiers are buried there, the dead heroes lying in death, as they stood in battle, shoulder to shoulder. Another plot, near the observatory, contains a large number of green mounds, under each of which is buried a veteran of the war of 1812, but without headstones, railing or monument.

In the plot owned by the American Dramatic Fund Association, are the graves of many fine actors, Lysander Thompson, Charles D. S. Howard, George Skeritt, Andrew Jackson Allen, famous as costumer, and others. In an adjoining lot lies all that is mortal of Francis Courtney Weymiss, the founder of the Dramatic Fund Association. Another theatrical celebrity, whose body lies in this cemetery, is Edmund Simpson, for many years the proprietor of the old Park theatre. On his tomb is the inscription, “Integer Vitae Scelerisque Perens,” which is said to have given offence to a New York minister, and his body was refused burial in a church cemetery on that account. Some seventy thousand seven hundred persons have been buried here; and it may be safely asserted that, among the many cemeteries called into life by the success of Greenwood, no one has been so well chosen, has advanced so rapidly or established itself upon so permanent a basis as this.

THE CEMETERY OF THE EVERGREENS

Was incorporated, October 3, 1849, and lies in both Kings and Queens counties, the county lines intersecting it. A portion lies in the south-eastern extremity of what was formerly the town of Bushwick, and now included in the limits of the city of Brooklyn. The cemetery comprises one hundred and twelve acres, the privilege having originally been granted of increasing it, if required, to five hundred acres.