Elwood cemetery with Revolutionary War veterans gets spruced up by volunteers, LI businesses

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, community members worked together Friday to restore and mark the final resting place of a militiaman and his family in Elwood.

The Blachly Family Cemetery, a small, nearly forgotten burial ground near Commack Fire Department Station 2, is one of 56 historic cemeteries in the Town of Huntington.

Helpers cleared the area of bushes, leveled the ground, put up fencing and installed a sign marking the known people buried there. South Setauket Home Depot and the Hicksville Signarama donated the materials used, and volunteers from the stores, along with firefighters, helped to restore the property.

Chris Longstreet, a volunteer firefighter for the Commack Fire Department and an operations manager at the South Setauket Home Depot, said the store looked for events geared toward veterans.

He said he teamed up with Harold Rowan, a member of the veterans affairs committee for the Commack Fire Department, who suggested finding a cemetery to clean up and beautify.

After collaborating with Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes and Huntington Supervisor Ed Smyth, they found the Blachly Family Cemetery.

Revolutionary War cemetery

"This is ... a Revolutionary War cemetery," Longstreet said, in reference to the presence in the graveyard of Revolutionary War militiaman Daniel Blachly Jr., along with Daniel Blachly Sr., who signed the Articles of Association in Huntington in 1775.

The site has only three original gravestone bases, along with one replacement stone for Blachly Jr., provided by the VA.

Besides the American Revolution patriots, about six members of the Blachly family are buried there, according to Hughes. Although the remains of other people also lay at the site, their names have been lost to time.

"The only reason we do know the names we have is because about 100 years ago or more, volunteers came and took down the inscription of all the gravestones," Hughes said.

He described the state of the burial ground before the cleanup effort, which included a work day in mid-April when volunteer firefighters helped to clear out the grounds, as "an overgrown mess in the middle of the woods" that did not have "the respect it deserves."

"So now clearing it out, putting up a fence to define the area a little bit better, will make it a more appropriate place as a final resting place for these patriots and their family members," he said. 

Known names on sign

Vincent Marino, the owner of Signarama in Hicksville, donated the sign listing the known names in the cemetery. The project is personally important to him, he said, because he has veterans in his family.

"We always want to support the armed forces [in] anything we can be a part of, so it’s important to us, as a company and personally," he said.

The cemetery lies directly behind the property of Elwood resident Alan Amarando, who said he found out about it when he was purchasing the house 27 years ago.

He said in the first couple of years of living there, Boy Scouts worked to beautify the area, but it had over time fallen into disrepair, leaving him grateful for the efforts of the volunteers. 

Although the volunteers cut through private property to get to the cemetery, the public entrance is through the woods on the other side. Hughes voiced concern of possible vandalism if children were to come across the site, but suggested creating a better-defined pathway as time moves on.

Hughes said they are also working with Home Depot to preserve a cemetery that is in front of their store in Commack.