Town of North Hempstead and Village of Great Neck Plaza officials met Wednesday, May 22 with members of Great Neck’s once-prominent Allen family to discuss the future of the family’s historic cemetery, which lay in the yard of a private home in a state of disrepair until a report last year sparked concerns over the burial ground’s preservation.
The town, the family, the property owner and the village all agree in principle that the cemetery should be restored, and the details of that restoration – including provisions to protect the privacy of adjacent property owners while allowing for public access – will be discussed at another meeting in July, according to town historian Howard Kroplick and Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender.
“It was a productive meeting,” said Kroplick. “It went very well.”
Kroplick’s October report, which detailed displaced headstones and construction on the centuries-old grave site, sparked a town investigation of the site’s ownership, which is yet to be completed.
The May 22 meeting included six members of the Allen family, whose antecedents owned Saddle Rock Grist Mill from 1715 through the 1820s, Celender, Kroplick, Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Kaiman, town attorney John Riordan, Town Councilwoman Lee Seeman, the adjacent property owners, members of the Great Neck Historical Society and other municipal officials.
The group met at Great Neck Plaza Village Hall, toured the burial ground and plotted a path forward for the cemetery.
“Everybody in the room was in agreement on [the need to preserve the cemetery,” Kroplick said.
“After recently meeting with the Village of Great Neck Plaza and members of the Allen Family, we are committed to working together to ensure that the cemetery is preserved and the neighbors privacy is protected,” said Kaiman in a statement.
Celender echoed the sentiment that the cemetery was worth restoring.
“We felt it was just good to have everybody in the same room,” said Celender. “Basically, we’re in agreement. It’s a historically significant cemetery.”
William Allen, 57, traveled from his Colorado home to tour his family’s burial plot. Allen, who grew up in Port Washington before leaving Long Island in the 1970s, said he was “shocked and disturbed” to hear of the cemetery’s state of disuse but said he was encouraged by the meeting.
“I was really glad the situation was being taken seriously,” Allen said. “If the village and the town do what they say they’re going to do I’m optimistic.”
The location of the cemetery in the yards of private homes complicates the process, Celender said, but the village’s goal is to reach resolution without the initiation of legal action.
“There’s a lot of unresolved issues about it. This is a very unusual circumstance,” Celender said. “Hopefully we can just get there by an agreement that spells out who’s doing what and how”
Among the issues, Kroplick said, were questions about the ownership of the grave site and the original locations of the headstones. The town will perform a title search prior to the planned July 10 follow-up meeting, and Kroplick said he was considering contracting with a company to do a below-ground radar survey to precisely locate the graves.
“I have a quote now for a company where that’s all they do – using ground penetrating radar to find where these grave sites are,” Kroplick said.
Other issues to be discussed include who will be responsible for the cemetery’s maintenance and how to allow public access to the site without compromising the privacy of homeowners.
“We haven’t agreed whether it will be the town or the village that has responsibility. That will be ironed out,” Kroplick said. “The property owners had concerns about their privacy, and that’s going to be taken into account as well.”
A report presented by Kroplick to town officials details the investigation of the cemetery, which began on July 25 when Kroplick said he received an anonymous phone call reporting possible desecration of the graveyard.
Located between 15 and 17 Pearce Place in Great Neck Plaza, the cemetery holds the remains of six 19th century members of the Allen family. An unrelated infant is also interred in the graveyard.
According to descriptions and photographs in the report, Kroplick found the cemetery overgrown with weeds and used for storage, with a storage shed erected on the property.
According to Kroplick’s report, the village is listed in county books as the owner of the plot and has paid taxes on it in recent years. Photographs from the report also show the removal of structures from the graveyard in October, after the publication of a Newsday article on the state of the cemetery.
The report also points to another quirk in the graveyard’s history: a $500 bequest left to Nassau County by Richard Allen for the maintenance of the plot. Deputy County Treasurer Beaumont Jefferson said the money had never been used and there was no documentation about the account, according to the report.
The report also tracked changes to the cemetery since 2000. A Great Neck Plaza historic survey from summer 2000 shows the headstones in a different location from their current placement, according to the report.
