Coincidences are Real — Making Sense of it All

In September, our son is moving to a new apartment in Brooklyn. The first thing I did whenI got the address was to look it up on Google Maps. “Strolling” around the streets of Bushwick, it struck me that I had been there before.

Well, I’ll be darned! Less than two miles from his apartment is the Most Holy Trinity Cemetery where my great-great-grandparents (Nichols Müller and Anna Marie Mandery) and great-grandparents (Joseph Glacy and Anna Müller) are buried.

According to the website for the cemetery, it was established in 1841 in Williamsburg, but moved ten-years later to its current location.[1] In 1899, The Brooklyn Eagle described this “Unique Burial Ground”:

Holy Trinity Cemetery, …, is probably unique among the burial places of this country. A city of the dead, in which all are equal, is the first impression of a visitor to this homely little German burying ground, where everything seems to breathe humility and piety, and where the pride of the world in the honors shown to the dead is conspicuous by its utter absence. One of the strenuous rules of the cemetery forbids the erection of stone monuments in any form whatever. All the mementos are either wood or galvanized iron. The latter are often painted in imitation of marble or granite. These imitations are sometimes very perfect and one is surprised to find on striking on that the monument is hollow.[2]

Apparently, almost every grave contained a verse or two dedicated to the deceased. “Quaint old German rhymes, tender, sincere, pathetic, and all breathing an intense religious spirit telling of the virtue and merits of those who sleep beneath.”[3]

Another feature of the cemetery was that it adopted an “old world” custom of placing playthings of a deceased child on the grave.[4] Joseph and Anna’s youngest daughter, “Katie,” who died at twenty-four days was also buried at Most Holy Trinity, perhaps with a baby blanket or a poem such as this one found at the cemetery:

“Life’s brimming cup to her bright lips for one brief hour was raised, But death dashed sown the glowing draught – God’s will be praised.”[5]

While the motivation of the church was admirable (to memorialize the poor and rich in an equal fashion), the practical effect was that most of the monuments have rusted away, including those of my ancestors. Still it will be very cool to have my son living so close to where his ancestors lived and died.

—————————-

[1] “Most Holy Trinity Cemetery,” Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary (https://trinity-stmary.org/history/most-holy-trinity-cemeterynbsp : accessed 3 August 2022).

[2] “Holy Trinity Cemetery,” The Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle, 26 November 1899, p. 18, col. 3.

[3] Thomas F. Meehan, “A Village Churchyard,” Charles George Herbermann, LL.D., ed., Historical Records and Studies, Volume VII (New York: The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1914) 197; digital images, Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/historicalrecor10unkngoog/page/n219/mode/1up?view=theater&q=village : accessed 3 August 2022).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid. Health Department, City of Brooklyn, certificate of death no. 12773 (1885), Katie Glacy; digital image (https://www1.nyc.gov/site/records/index.page : accessed 3 August 2022).