Up in the Hudson Valley of New York, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery has it all: colonial headstones, fantastic mausoleums, amazing fall colors, and its very own legend of the Headless Horseman. On a trip upstate recently, I got to visit this scenic and historic cemetery during the peak of its foliage changing for the winter. It was a pleasant and unexpected surprise so late in the season!
I think the interesting thing about Sleepy Hollow is that it represents the full range of our treatment of death in America. In the Old Dutch Churchyard, hand-carved stone by notable stone carvers of the 18th century is represented, displayed in the typical "burying ground style," complete with brownstone and soul effigies. Moving through the cemetery into sections dating to the 19th century, you can see the transition to soft marble, the words carved into the stone fading away more quickly than the colonial headstones. The 19th to 20th-century sections become more haphazard and less uniform, with different shapes and sizes of stones, more obelisks, and more crosses.
Up on the hill, there are rows of mausoleums, built by those with more wealth. This area is more akin to a neighborhood necropolis, like the kind you can still find in Etruscan necropolises in Italy. The monuments get larger and more intricate, and there's a mausoleum for William Rockefeller that's bigger than some houses of still-living people! In the most modern sections, you can find still tended graves of uniform size, made of sturdy, heavy granite. A walk from one end to the next of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery really will tell you all you need to know about the American experience of death, from burying grounds to commercial interments.
It was great to just stroll through the cemetery, taking in the foliage and the serene rows of graves. During October, the cemetery is busy catering to the legends of Sleepy Hollow and the headless horseman, giving tours and celebrating the Halloween season, but I was glad to visit in November when the place was quiet and still.
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