| Cemetery Description: |
Baron Hirsch Cemetery is an active, not for profit cemetery located in a residential area about 25 miles from midtown Manhattan. It's over 100 years old, covers about 80 acres and has had more than 50,000 burials. The staff in the office are very helpful and can be reached at 718-698-0162. BH is peaceful and attractive with lots of grass and trees. The grounds are mostly well maintained. Several old sections, however, including the Joseph Held Association section, contain graves that have been untended for many years. This is because the organizations providing burial benefits became defunct and did not provide for ongoing grave care. In the Joseph Held section, there is a considerable variation in the condition of the graves. Some grave sites are extremely overgrown. English ivy plantings whose vines have not been pruned for decades are a big problem as is poison ivy. On the other hand, some graves are totally weed-free because relatives pay for care or tend the graves themselves. Others just have no weeds because the graves were covered with pebbles and there are no plantings to get out of hand. It should be noted that in order to collect data from and photograph many of the tombstones in this section, vines and weeds were pulled or cut away wherever it was reasonable but some stones remained inaccessible. Sadly those buried beneath these stones are not represented in the index unless their names were readable on a site map made available by the cemetery office. |
