Who was buried at Barker Park?

Originally published in the “Other Voices” section of the Troy Record.

It’s no surprise to Troy’s old timers to know that Barker Park was once a public burial ground before it became the site of Troy’s first City hall. But, it might be a surprise to know that two of Uncle Sam Wilson’s children were buried there. It also might be a surprise to know that this ground was the final resting place of slaves and unidentified travelers as well as many of Troy’s early settlers and prominent citizens.

There was a mysterious interment attributed to a man by the name of Aaron Burr Reeve. Could there be a connection to our third vice president?

Let’s document some known facts made available by local historian Don Rittner.

Prior to 1630, the plot was part of Mohican territory known as Great Meadow. In 1707, a tract encompassing what is now most of downtown Troy was purchased by Dirck Vanderheyden. In 1774, Jacob Vanderheyden became owner of the middle farm that includes the Barker Park area. On May 10, 1796, Jacob Vanderheyden deeded to the Troy village trustees a plot to be used as a “public” burial ground. It covered land from Third Street running east along State Street to the alley, and south to the First Baptist Church.

On July 12, 1875, The Troy Daily Press ran a story about the controversy surrounding the removal of individual graves in order to build city hall. This story revealed that in 1796, Jacob Vanderheyden deeded two “plats” for burial purposes: “one for the inhabitants of the then-village of Troy” and “the other ground was used more miscellaneously and negro slaves and unknown strangers found there a last resting place.” This latter plot is now Barker Park.

A list shared by Terry Page of Oakwood Cemetery gave us the names of people buried in Barker Park. Oakwood has records showing that 144 graves from the public burial ground were re-interred at Oakwood to make space for city hall on July 17, 1875. This list reveals name, burial and grave numbers.

Looking over these names, we see a Polly Willson, and a Samuel Willson. Hmmmmm?

Back to the cemetery office. With the burial number in hand, information from a master file produced the name of the deceased, date of death and parents of the deceased; in this case Samuel and Betsey Wilson, none other than our Uncle (and Mrs. Uncle) Same. The Wilsons were known to be members of First Baptist, located just south of the burial ground, so it’s understandable why young Samuel would be buried there. His interment was July 27, 1807.

And finally, the story with this Aaron Burr Reve interment?

The same list of interments transferred from the old burial ground at State and Third streets to Oakwood includes the name, “Reeve, Aaron Burr” as burial 5077, grave 101. The Oakwood office provided a master file that revealed the date of burial, age at death, and parents’ names. In this case, the date of burial was Sept. 1, 1809; age at death was 29; and parents were Hon. T. Reeve and Mrs. Reeve.

Further investigation provided by the Russell Sage College Library’s newspaper archives produced an obituary from the Lansingburgh Gazette of Sept. 15, 1809. Sure enough, this person was important enough to deserve a notice. It stated. “…he was an attorney at law, and the only son of Hon. T. Reeve, one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Connecticut.”

Rumors have been around Troy since the infamous duel of Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr (which happened in 1804 at Weehawk Heights, N.J.) to the effect that Burr retired after the duel to live in Lansingburgh, at least for a while, in the home of Augustus Peebles. So there may be a possible Troy connection. But, could this suggest any connection to Jefferson’s vice president?

Well, here it is. Reeve’s father turns out to be on Tapping Reeve, Esq., prominent jurist of Litchfield, Conn., and founder of the first U.S. law school in 1765 in Litchfield. The school is still there, by the way, as a museum.

And, as it turns out, thanks to a Google connection, we learned that Judge Reeve was married to Aaron Burr’s sister, Sarah, in 1771. Apparently, they named their son after her father, Rev. Aaron Burr, who was founder of the College of New Jersey, today known as Princeton University. We also found that Vice President Aaron Burr had been a student at this law school.

From here it’s guesswork about why the young lawyer Reeve happened to located in Troy. A likely scenario is he had good connections to the Albany area.  Vice President Burr was well known in the Capital District since he married an Albany woman and had practiced law there for a time. When the young Aaron Burr Reeve obtained his legal training, he might well have decided to practice in Troy, which had just won designation as the site of Rensselaer County’s new courthouse. At that time, Troy was a bustling young community at the headwaters of the Hudson River. It would be a good place a young attorney to start out. When he died at the age of 29, in 1809, cause unknown, we know he was buried in Barker Part.

So the answer to “Who was buried in Barker Park?” may never be completely known.

Fortunately, we still have the documents at the Oakwood Cemetery Office, which are available for research.