The Serendipity Continues at Woodhull Cemetery

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I have written before about the Woodhull Cemetery that my DAR chapter is wanting to preserve and restore.  I’d been having quite a few roadblocks on the town level to getting official approval to make changes to the cemetery.  One would think since it’s abandoned, that this should be a no-brainer.  The town doesn’t really want to shell out funds to maintain it, so you think they’d be jumping at the chance to get rid of it.  Part of that process is getting the deed and land records to prove that nobody currently “officially” owns the land.

My trip to the county clerk’s office to find the deed didn’t go so well.  In fact, I was told my task would take months of research or I could pay a title search company nearly $600 to find it for me, to which I wanted to keel over on the spot.  Determined, I came home and sat down at the computer to look through the old grantor/grantee records.  And don’t you know…

Cemetery Workshop

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On August 12th, my husband, my co-worker Colleen, and I attended a hands-on cemetery workshop where we learned how to properly treat and clean headstones.  The workshop was sponsored by the Orange County Historian and was led by professional headstone cleaner & cemetery expert, Marianne Greenfield, a twenty-year member of the Association for Gravestone Studies and historian for the town of Delhi, NY.  We joined Linda Standish, town historian at the Washingtonville, NY, cemetery that is cared for by Washingtonville Presbyterian Church.  With their limited funding for perpetual care of the cemetery, it desperately needed some loving care and attention so the workshop was a great way to bring awareness to the cemetery’s needs while teaching at the same time.

The Woodhulls of Orange County

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Last night, I gave a presentation to my DAR chapter on the Woodhulls of Orange County, NY.  Unfortunately, my camera quit recording 13 seconds into my presentation so there is no footage of me giving the actual talk.  I’ve rerecorded it here in an expanded version including more images and additional information that I skipped last night.  So even if you were present last night and saw it in person, I invite you to watch it again because I cover so much more here in the slideshow.  Hope you all enjoy.

Hannah Woodhull, consort

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HannahWoodhullconsortThe other day my husband and I were at the Cemetery of the Highlands in Highland Mills, NY near Woodbury.  (Orange County) My genealogical serendipity continues to amaze me as I stumbled upon yet another set of Woodhulls from my line and from the Revolutionary War era.  I wasn’t even looking for them and yet, there they were… all in a large family section with about 20 of them, including that of Colonel Jesse Smith Woodhull.  Even in my delight at stumbling across a distant relative and seeing his DAR marker in place, I was more intrigued by a nearby grave, that as you can see, is sadly being slowly overtaken by the ground cover.