With a $5,600 grant from Preserve New York - a program supported by the NYS Council of the Arts and the NYS Preservation League that makes funds available for reports and surveys on historic structures and landscapes - The Town of East Hampton will begin documentation of its burying grounds and gravesites.

 

The grant will fund a cultural resource survey with the goal of listing all historically significant East Hampton cemeteries and gravesites on the National Register of Historic Places and to provide information to prioritize its ongoing restoration work.

 

In a press release, the Town of East Hampton described the importance of the local burial grounds and gravesites.

 

“The historical and cultural significance of East Hampton’s surviving burying grounds, cemeteries, and gravesites is hard to overstate,” the statement said. “These sites preserve monuments created to memorialize individual members of the community, and in this way left unique records of the deceased that are characteristic of their time. Collectively, the Town’s burying grounds, cemeteries, and gravesites are a group of historic landscapes that preserve not only headstones but also walls and fences, plantings, and pathways that survive largely intact from the 18th and 19th centuries.”

 

The Town will use the funds to hire the Burying Ground Preservation Group (BGPG) to conduct the survey of gravesites, including Native American burial grounds, with the goal of listing all cemeteries of historical significance within the Town of East Hampton.

 

"We are pleased and grateful to receive this Preserve New York grant to help us achieve full protection of our historic gravesites and burying grounds, which are such an important historic cultural resource," said East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc.