Historians piece back together once-forgotten Long Swamp Cemetery

Just off Jericho Turnpike in Huntington Station, less than 100 feet from the busy thoroughfare, is the final resting place for at least 50 people, the first of whom was buried there in 1737, Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes said.

Long Swamp Cemetery on Barkers Lane contains the remains of three Revolutionary War militia men and three men who signed the Articles of Association, which indicated their support for the cause of independence.

Long Swamp Cemetery, named for what the community had been called long ago, holds the graves of veterans John Carll and Scudder Carll, and Joseph Ireland, who also signed the Articles of Association. Thanks to the Department of Veterans Affairs, their graves are marked.

But the locations of the graves of Ananias Carll, Joel Smith and Samuel Smith — signers of the Articles of Association — aren't clear, along with several other burial sites.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle, which is really what we’re presented with,” Hughes said of the cemetery, where the last burial happened in 1904. “There are 50 graves and really only one original tombstone remains standing, and the three veteran stones are standing but the rest are broken and scattered.”

  A new plan is underway to put the puzzle back together. It started in May with a Facebook post from Greenlawn resident Patrick Deegan.

The cemetery is one of many old burial grounds that dot Long Island and are now tucked away, easily overshadowed by decades of development around them. In the Home Depot shopping center parking lot in Commack is the Burr family cemetery, with eight grave sites. The 19th century burial ground holds the remains of two War of 1812 veterans.

Deegan, a co-founder of the Long Island Historical Association, a group organized to study Long Island history, said he first became aware of Long Swamp Cemetery about four years ago. A visit to the old burial ground sparked something within him.

“After realizing I had inadvertently walked over unmarked graves at Long Swamp, I felt an urgent, personal responsibility to ensure these individuals are treated with the dignity and remembrance they were long denied,” he said.

His post garnered a lot of attention and set in motion a plan to restore the headstones.

Several volunteers have come together to work with the Town of Huntington to restore the headstone pieces.

John D. Williams, who does research and restoration at cemeteries, is working with the town to bring a Boy Scout troop to the burial ground in the fall to help organize the stones.

“After we document them in these exact positions, the troop will match the pieces ... clean them, scrub them appropriately, and then match the words and see who these folks are.”

Hughes said repairing the stones had been part of a long-term plan. Over the years, he said, the town-owned cemetery became a teen hangout, complete with bonfires, and was eventually completely overgrown.

Starting in 2011, American Legion Greenlawn Post 1244 began working with the town and volunteers on a plan to clean up the cemetery. The town keeps the grass cut while Post 1244 watches over it. They work with the Huntington Manor Fire Department juniors in the fall on cleanup and mark the veteran graves for Memorial Day, Hughes said.

“Within a couple of years, the cemetery was more or less in the condition you see it today,” Hughes said of the tidy bucolic site. “As far as the grounds are concerned, it’s in pretty good shape — it’s the headstones that’s a problem.”

Russell Huff, co-founder of the Long Island Historical Association, said he has distant relatives buried at Long Swamp Cemetery. Besides it being the final resting place for some of his distant forebears and those who fought for America’s independence, Huff said it’s important that it be restored. Doing so would bring dignity to all of the departed resting there, he said.

“All of our ancestors and relatives that are dead and buried need a little bit of that respect,” he said.