Battle to save historic White Plains cemetery is aided by an 1828 deed

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1 The Journal News July 12, 2007 Battle to save historic White Plains cemetery is aided by an 1828 deed WHITE PLAINS - The descendants of Francis Purdy have helped shape Westchester and the nation since the family patriarch sailed to the Colonies from England in The Purdys provided a farmhouse to George Washington for use as his headquarters during the Battle of White Plains and hanged at least one Tory from an oak tree outside another family home in a North Salem hamlet that now bears the Purdy name. (The Tory was cut down and released with a warning.) Descendants spread through Westchester and New England, building mills, barns, churches and schools. Today, there are signs of the family everywhere in Westchester. Besides the namesake hamlet, there are a sprinkling of descendants from Rye to Croton, Purdy avenues and streets in a half-dozen communities, and about as many Purdy burial grounds, including one on a hilltop overlooking Mamaroneck Avenue at the south end of this city where the Purdys buried 66 of their own between 1760 and The cemetery, now a tattered and forgotten remnant of the founding family, appeared headed for oblivion last year when its owner began preparations to move the bodies so he could subdivide the land and sell the lots. The owner, William Wolfram, listed the 3.7-acre site that includes the quarter-acre burial ground for $3.5 million. His real estate broker showed the property to potential buyers and contacted another cemetery across the city to make arrangements to move the bodies there. Offers trickled in, and for a while it looked as though the 247-year-old burial ground would be wiped from history. Then Purdy cousins Gabriel ( ) and David (1801 to 1877) interceded. Digging at the Westchester County Archives in Elmsford through a string of deeds to the land that includes the cemetery, a local historian discovered a restriction the cousins included when they sold the land for $1 in 1828 to Margaret Haviland, the last Purdy to live on it. The covenant "reserves" from the sale the corner of the property "used as a burying place for the issue, descendants and family connections of Jonathan Purdy, Esquire, deceased."

2 Jonathan Purdy ( ), the grandson of Francis, was the first Purdy to own the land and established the cemetery. Rob Hoch, president of the White Plains Historical Society, said he found similar covenants in deeds every time the land was sold since 1828, including the deed transferring the land to Wolfram's grandparents when they acquired it from the city for $1,200 at a foreclosure auction in Hoch said another clause in the newly discovered deeds grants access "to those who may have occasion of any necessary intercourse with said burying ground," which he said allows Purdy descendants and preservationists back into the cemetery after being kept out by the Wolfram family for almost 60 years. "We believe the Jonathan Purdy family has the right to go ahead at this time to survey the property, rehabilitate the cemetery and work with the historical society to accomplish that," he said. "We're still amenable to working out something the Wolfram family would be agreeable to, but it's not going to entail disinterment of the bodies." Wolfram, a concert pianist who lives in Manhattan, said he was unaware of the covenant until a few weeks ago. He was unconvinced. "My family bought this particular parcel of property from the city of White Plains in 1949 and has been living and paying taxes on it ever since, so any claim that someone else has rights to the cemetery area would come as quite a surprise and, we think, should be viewed with considerable skepticism," Wolfram said in an . By now, there appears little left to preserve at the cemetery, at least aboveground. Though the cemetery sits on a ridge only feet from the edge of Mamaroneck Avenue and overlooks the bustling Amodio's Nursery, there is no sign of it from either. It is buried under a tangle of invasive weeds and piles of junk - a demolished wooden shed, rotted tree stumps, several tires, beer bottles, a rusted bicycle - mixed with the chipped remains of headstones. Only a handful of headstones still stand, most at sharp tilts, and only three or four bear inscriptions that can be even partially read. One belongs to Isaac Purdy ( ), a Revolutionary War veteran. Local preservationists said most of the decline occurred since Wolfram's parents bought the property. "It's been a running feud with the Wolfram family," said Jack Harrington, a former president of the historical society. "It's only out of deference to (Wolfram's mother, Annette), a widow for most of these years, that we did not cause a huge disturbance about getting access to the cemetery. When we first started in the 1960s, a small group went out there to do some cleanup one Sunday. Mrs. Wolfram called the police and had

3 them evicted. We've been trying in a reasonably friendly way to reach out to the Wolframs, to say, 'Please. There are descendants of the Purdys who would like to get in there and do a little cleanup.'" Clayton Purdy ( ), a 10th-generation descendent of Francis, was more blunt. "Those 66 stones were readable in 1900," said Purdy, a retired engineer living in Utah, referring to the first of two surveys to record the inscriptions on the headstones. "Now there's only two that can be read. I think in the back of the minds of the Wolfram family was the thought, 'If we don't do anything to that cemetery, we'll be able to sell the whole thing and nobody will say a word.'" Wolfram would not comment on the allegations. Wolfram grew up in the house his parents, Leonard and Annette, built on the property. Leonard lived there until his death in 1989, Annette until hers in Wolfram put the house on the market shortly after his mother died. "We've had offers, but we've put it off because we want to do what's right," said Wolfram's real estate broker, Michael Graessle, a former city Planning Commissioner. "They want to make sure they don't have somebody who just comes in and just does something and gets embarrassed, like what happened in Yonkers." In Yonkers, the state attorney general accused a developer who built the Costco-Home Depot shopping center on the site of a former Jewish cemetery of moving the bodies of only 12 or 13 of the 147 children buried there when he began construction in 1989, and reburying several of the children in one grave. The developer, Robert Morris, said the missing bodies never existed, but he settled the charges for $100,000. Clayton Purdy worries that many of the bodies in the Purdy cemetery may be headed for the same fate. Lorraine Kennery, manager of the White Plains Rural Cemetery, said Wolfram has asked her about combining remains. "I said, 'We do two caskets per plot,'" Kennery said about a recent conversation she had with Graessle. "They got upset about that. (They said), 'We don't want to buy 33 plots. What if we put more bodies in each casket?'" Graessle said fewer caskets and plots would make sense because "some of these remains won't have remains."

4 "We're led to believe some of the remains we'll find will be buttons and things, not likely more than that," he said. Before Wolfram can move any of the remains, state law requires that he hire a funeral director to oversee the work. Two local directors have turned him down. "It seemed wrong to me to move these people," said Marie McMahon, owner of McMahon Lyon Hartnett Funeral Home. "This is a cemetery. Why disturb it?" When Graessle asked McMahon to refer him to another local funeral director, she suggested Matthew Fiorillo at Ballard-Durand. Then she said she called Fiorillo and told him, "I wouldn't touch this thing with a 10-foot pole. It's not worth losing your reputation over." Fiorillo took the advice. "My job is to preserve cemeteries," he said. Purdy descendants say the earth where Christopher Purdy ( ) was the first to be buried has meaning that extends beyond the family. "What's happening in America is that everything is getting uprooted, paved over, leveled and obliterated," said Craig Purdy ( ), a Croton resident who is a 12thgeneration descendant of Francis Purdy's. "The cemetery shouldn't be uprooted. It's a reminder that we need to teach our children of the life and times of our forebears. I'd hate to see it lost in favor of a housing development." Reach Keith Eddings at keddings@lohud.com or

5 A troubled family history WHITE PLAINS - For a third time in 44 years, a family that settled this city and helped to build it through three centuries may find itself a victim of the progress it helped create. Once before, in 1963, the descendants of Francis Purdy, the family patriarch who arrived in the Colonies from England in 1632, found themselves buried in an inconvenient place. Seven Purdys who had been laid to rest in a cemetery beside the old Grace Church on Lyons Place and South Broadway were among the remains of at least 62 people that were moved to the White Plains Rural Cemetery to make way for an annex to the White Plains Hotel (which also is now history). The oldest of the 62 remains belonged to Capt. Abe Hatfield, who was buried beside the church in A decade later, in the demolition binge that accompanied urban renewal, the Purdys suffered another indignity when the city threatened to tear down the farmhouse the family built on Spring Street (now Water Street) in 1721 and loaned to George Washington as a headquarters for six days during the Battle of White Plains in 1776 and for two months in Preservationists persuaded the city to move the house to a Park Avenue hilltop that overlooks downtown, where it has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The house is the oldest in White Plains, said Jack Harrington, former president of the city's historical society. "There's a quickly vanishing cultural history in White Plains," said Robert Hoch, the historical society's current president. "There's an era, whether it was during Colonial times or in the early years of our nation - there are very few monuments left of that, particularly in White Plains, for a variety of reasons. One is the pace at which things have changed in our city." - Keith Eddings Headstone's tender farewell Ye fond relations stop your falling tears No more your cares she wants or sorrows hears. Remov'd from troubles to the blest abode Her love her thoughts are all transfer'd to God. Inscription on the headstone of Jennet Ann Purdy, who died in September 1810 at age 9 [PICTURE]

6 Caption: Former White Plains Historical Society President Jack Harrington, left, and Craig Purdy of Croton-on-Hudson discuss the history of the Purdy family at the Purdy Cemetery in White Plains. Owner William Wolfram has listed the property, which includes the cemetery, for sale. Stuart Bayer/The Journal News