Franklin Park Burial Ground:
A Sad Tale of Stories Lost
Beneath this parking lot in downtown Syracuse at the corner of Franklin and Washington Sts is a tale not only of what is gone, but what has been forgotten.
c.1834
The age old problem with humanity is its finiteness.
We are born, we live, and we die.
For every new settlement,
the founders need to answer the inevitable question:
Where do we bury the dead?
For the new settlement along the crossroads
of the Genesee Turnpike and the Erie Canal,
Bogardus Corners, later the Village of Syracuse,
The dead were buried at the edge of the business district,
by Onondaga Creek at the corner of Franklin and Washington Sts.
Labeled simply "Burying Ground", this was a no-frills,
simple burying place for the new village's dead
So what is a burying ground?
It is a place used for burial, usually lacking in the organization found
cemeteries or churchyards.
Headstones can be at different angles.
The layout is often an afterthought.
But unlike churchyards, it is available to all residents to be buried in.
"In downtown Syracuse, NY. The former inner-city park is now a parking lot...
An 8-months-old boy is considered to have been the first burial in 1820,
the last burial was in 1847."
~~~Find a Grave
But the city grew and the land around it soon filled up with business for two reasons:
1- The Erie Canal
2- The Railroad
The cemetery borders expanded as the newly minted
City of Syracuse had expanded to include the Village of Lodi and the Village of Salina.
But the railroad eyed the land...
By 1868, the freight yards were growing to the west as the land
pic from the OHA
The original station, now looked old and weary, not a building worthy of a an industrial hub.
By 1868, the freight yards were growing to the west as the land
dedicated to "burying ground" began to shrink.
Some fashionable people removed their loved ones to the new
Oakwood Cemetery, a lovely place of groves and trees...
not a place next to soot and the constant noise of trains rumbling through.
Now the land on the western end of the cemetery was built upon.
And to replace the aged train station, a new shiny one was built...
...on the southern edge of the remaining Franklin Burying Ground.
And quite literally, use of the land was railroaded to a different purpose.
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Lines eventual crossed and covered all of the original burying ground...
...and all evidence of the place of burial for the first residents
was obliterated
from sight...
and then memory.
Why does this all matter 200 years later?
First, aside from the fashionable moving their loved ones to Oakwood,
a luxury not everyone could afford there is
NO record that the remaining were ever moved.
And if they were, no one knows where.
Second, in the weaving of our area's story,
THEIR LIVES MATTERED.
Someone loved them.
Someone smiled when they saw them.
Someone cried over their passing.
Someone bought them a headstone.
Someone cared.
Their stories would all be but lost if it weren't for a list of names
that can be in no manner a full list.
Like lists of names in the Bible,
there is little tangible to make their stories visible in the present.
But there is a sad tale this cemetery does tell.
It is one of a horrific explosion on August 20, 1841.
pic by Pamela Priest
While fighting what they thought was a lumber fire, hidden barrels of gunpowder ignited in and sent pieces of wood blasting like missiles at unsuspecting responders.
Two of whom,
Mathew Smelt and Isaac Stanton
were buried here.
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~nyononda/CEMETERY/FRANKLIN.HTM
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~nyononda/CEMETERY/FRANKLIN.HTM
Not only were their lives lost,
but their markers,
and ultimately the location of their place of rest.
An explosion of a different kind--industry-- wiped their memories from the land
And all that remains today is a place to park your car.
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