Historic map of St. George’s graves brings past back to life

Every week, visitors come to St. George’s Episcopal Church on Front Street to search among its 500-plus grave monuments for their forebears or just to enjoy history. 

Courtesy of Rock Hall Museum Director Amy Vacchio and her colleague, Matt Longo, the visitors now have a new aid to finding ancestral names of the people who established the Town of Hempstead, 

Shortly after the morning service at St. George’s on Sunday, Vacchio unveiled a permanent map that details the locations of St. George’s graves. 

The map is inscribed in color on a metal surface, which also holds information regarding St. George’s, the Town of Hempstead, and the long-ago inhabitants of Rock Hall who are buried in the cemetery. 

A QR code on the map will take visitors to HistoricStGeorgeCemetery.org, where they will find an alphabetical listing of the names of the interred, and information about many of the deceased.

“Buried here are the first families of Hempstead,” Vacchio told the crowd of about 65 who came to view the unveiling. “The Martins, Hewletts, Seaburys, Clowes, Bedells, Carmans, Van Wycks, and Woods, just to name a few. Their stories offer a glimpse of life, war, religion, disease, and family during the last three centuries of Long Island History.”

“We welcome everyone here,” said former Town Supervisor Laura Gillen, who is now running to represent New York’s Fourth Congressional District. “We appreciate the work of Rock Hall Museum and encourage everyone to visit all our town museums.”

“The history here is something we need to preserve,” said Hempstead Village Trustee Kevin Boone, “because it’s about our village, our town, and our county.” 

After a blessing by Fr. Sean Wallace, the interim priest-in-charge at St. George’s, a gold-and-brown cloth was removed from the map. Attendees gathered to study it. Then they meandered through the grassy expanse among the monuments, inhaling three and a half centuries of history. 

Vacchio and her family, joined by village residents, cleaned lichen from several grave monuments using a special spray. Gathering a team to restore as many of the  stones as possible will be the next major project.