The McCoun Cemetery, located on the corner of Sandy Hill Road and Agnes Street in the town of Oyster Bay is the final resting place of a persistent mystery.
Among the professionally carved and imported headstones, there are two stones whose presence has not been documented on any of the usual sites like Find A Grave, and I Dream of Geneology. The first stone is pictured above. A photo of it appears in Gaynell Stone's 2009 paper, "Sacred Landscapes: Material Evidence of Ideological and Ethnic Choice in Long Island, New York, Gravestones, 1680—1800," but Stone doesn't give any information aside from labeling the stone as belonging to "Josephi F. Warden," and noting it as a fieldstone gravemarker. The second marker is several feet away, laying flat and surrounded by ivy.
As you can see, the stone is very faint and difficult to read. To help with this issue, I was able to filter the image through the ID Stretch app, which was originally created to make rock art more visible, but works on some images of faded headstones as well:
As you can see, the stone is far more visible now, and the first name Stephen is clearly visible. Next to the name Stephen is the word or name "uedeto," which has an unclear meaning. These two stones caught my attention because they are carved fieldstone grave markers, each with the same spelling of deceased (desesed), and similar soul effigies.
It is my preliminary opinion that these two stones, despite the fact that they weren't professionally carved, were made by the same person. Fieldstones were usually used to mark the graves of poor or low-class members of society, and it's even possible that Josephie and Stephen were enslaved at the time of their deaths. The presence of these stones is unique, and unfortunately, so far I haven't found much information about them. I have reached out to the Oyster Bay Historical Society in the hope of learning more and will update the blog with anything I find.
留言