A push to restore old Oyster Bay cemetery

Marmaduke Earle's cracked and toppled headstone belies his significance in Oyster Bay.

He headed the town's first schoolhouse and led its oldest Baptist church for 55 years. According to legend, Earle became known as "the marrying minister" for traveling on horseback to perform more early 19th century weddings than anyone else on Long Island.

His 1856 grave marker at the rear of an abandoned Baptist burial ground rests among collapsed, rusted fencing and an overgrown tree used to anchor a neighboring laundry line.

"How would you like your family's burial site to look like this?" Diane Melograne asked one morning as she walked through the small Orchard Street lot that bleeds into a neighboring backyard.

Melograne and her husband, Raymond, are pastors of the nearby North Shore Assembly of God, which is on the site of Earle's Baptist church and about a half-block from the cemetery. The couple wants to restore the 36-plot burial ground and has asked Oyster Bay for help resetting stones.

They also hope to gather volunteers to regularly clean the property.

The cemetery grounds are "desecrated and in despicable condition," Oyster Bay Main Street Association director Isaac Kremer said at the last Town Board meeting.

"It makes perfect sense for that to be restored along with everything else we've done in the last decade," he said, referring to efforts to renovate downtown building façades.

Earle's great-great-grandson has tried to make his own improvements. In 2003, Skip Earle spent $325 to reset Marmaduke's faded limestone marker, only to see it toppled again. Teens used the headstone to push off a makeshift rope swing.

"It's not good enough to go back there and drink some beers," said Skip Earle, 55, of Bayport. "They have to knock some stones down, too."

Abandoned cemeteries fall under town jurisdiction, but only basic maintenance is required. Still, Oyster Bay will soon repair the fence, look into removing the overgrown tree and consult with the Melogranes about repairing headstones, officials said.

Fixing all the toppled stones - the youngest of which is from the 1930s - would cost several thousand dollars, but town historian John Hammond said the work should be carefully coordinated. "You can do more damage by lifting that stone and trying to put it back in place," he said. "It needs to be done professionally."

Besides Marmaduke Earle, pastor and principal of the original Oyster Bay Academy, town figures buried at the Baptist cemetery include William Wright, an early Quaker settler, and Mary Cooper, whose Revolutionary War-era diaries are considered unique for their account of Long Island farm life.

They all deserve a fix that lasts, Skip Earle said.

"You'd hate for somebody to spend a lot of time and effort," he said, "and then have it happen again and again."