On Sunday June 20, 2010 beginning at 12.30, I’ll be leading a walking tour of Trinity Cemetery, focusing on the numerous connections between the cemetery and the adjacent Audubon Park Historic District. While the cemetery is the final resting place of well-known and famous people such as Alfred Tennyson Dickens, Clement Clarke Moore, Mayor Fernando Wood, and numerous Astors, this tour will focus on lesser known individuals, who often go unnoticed. Each of these people has a tie to Audubon Park, either through property ownership, friendship with the Audubons, or both.
Along the walk, you’ll meet William Burgoyne, Samson and Elizabeth Valentine, Richard and Mary Carman, and their daughter Lucene (right), as well as the numerous occupants of the Audubon crypt that lies beneath the Audubon Monument. And, you’ll learn the answers to such questions as “Why is Audubon’s monument placed precisely where it is?” “How did a bequest from Louise Comstock change the course of Audubon scholarship?” and “Why was Edward Talman’s leg buried two years before he was?”
The tour will begin at Audubon’s monument behind the Church of the Intercession, Broadway and 155th Street and will last approximately one hour, followed by a question and answer session in the chapel of Trinity Cemetery. Part of the tour will include steps, hills, and occasionally uneven walkways, so be sure to wear comfortable, reliable shoes.
Following the Q&A, at 2 p.m. the Dan Aran Trio will perform a concert of jazz music at the Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, located in the western portion of the cemetery between 153rd and 155th Street. The concert is part of Trinity’s Concerts-To-Go series. Both the walking tour and the concert are free and open to the public.
(Left, base of the Audubon Monument)
Edward Talman, an Audubon relative and Audubon Park resident
Two of the three men in Trinity Cemetery bearing the name William Burgoyne
Comstock: a triangular marker for a triangular plot.
Audubon Park Perspectives 