Just found this article this afternoon. Worser and worser. > Cohoes owns part of a cemetery, and no one knows exactly what to do with it. > Mayor James E. McDonald announced today that the city pays an annuity of $22 for a portion of the Crescent Cemetery, located northwest of the Crescent Bridge, and that, if possible, he would like to sell it. > The matter was brought to the attention of the mayor last week by Mrs. Paul Bethel, secretary-treasurer of the cemetery board of trustees, who requested this year’s payment. > The cemetery plots, totaling one and 59 hundredths acres, were sold to the city in 1890 for a basic price of $795, plus $20 a year in perpetuity for the upkeep of the fence surrounding the plots and the road leading to the section. > Mayor McDonald explained the city purchased the section to relocate the bodies of Civil War veterans of Cohoes previously buried in what is now West End Park on Columbia Street. When the city decided to replace the cemetery with a park, Mayor McDonald said relocation of the graves in the Crescent Cemetery was decided upon. > “But I can’t see why we should pay this money annually,” the mayor said, “when we really aren’t getting any use out of it.” > The mayor said that when the bodies and monuments were moved out of Cohoes, the deceased all were buried in one common grave, and the monuments dumped in the Mohawk River en route to the Crescent Cemetery. A total of 172 burial plots in the area owned by Cohoes lie unused, according to a map of the cemetery requested by the mayor from the Saratoga County Clerk’s Office. > Mrs. Bethel explained the original annuity of $20 was increased two dollars in 1907. The amount was paid ever year, she said, except during [the] period from 1952 to 1965. > Mrs. Bethel said the area owned by Cohoes is in very poor condition and has not been kept. “The graves are all sunken in, and the entire area is overgrown with trees,” she said. > The matter is expected to be brought before the Common Council at its next meeting. Tompkins, Bill. “Cohoes Ponder Future of Unused Cemetery.” Times Record. March 19, 1968: 13 cols 3-4. Map of Crescent Union Cemetery with Cohoes’ section in pink: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pis&PIcrid=2281947&PIpi=67549562&PIMode=cemetery If Cohoes buried 949 people from the City Cemetery in a mass grave in Crescent (plus later burials of poor and unidentified people), I’d think it would’ve taken more than just three plots even if they were mostly just bones without coffins. Also, the terms of the bill (L. 1896, ch. 808) http://books.google.com/books?id=-RWxAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1063 as passed and amended by the NYS Legislature and signed by the Governor involved issuing bonds not just for reinterring bodies but “to reset the monuments and gravestones” - not to dump them into the Mohawk River. I hope they didn’t really dump them. I wonder what the Common Council and Mayor decided in 1968? Chris Philippo