East Hampton Awarded Grant To Preserve Historic Burying Grounds

East Hampton NY

30 July, 2021

9:38 PM

Description

EAST HAMPTON, NY — East Hampton Town was awarded a grant recently to document culturally significant historic burying grounds and gravesites. The $5,600 "Preserve New York" grant will be used for a cultural resource survey that will help to list all historically significant East Hampton cemeteries and gravesites on the National Register of Historic Places, the town said. The grant was made possible through the Preservation League of New York State and their program partners at the New York State Council on the Arts and the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the town said. Town officials were enthusiastic about the grant, stating that the historical and cultural significance of East Hampton's surviving burying grounds, cemeteries, and gravesites "is hard to overstate. These sites preserve monuments created to memorialize individual members of the community, and in this way left unique records of the deceased that are characteristic of their time." The town's burying grounds, cemeteries, and gravesites "are a group of historic landscapes that preserve not only headstones but also walls and fences, plantings, and pathways that survive largely intact from the 18th and 19th centuries," the town said. The cultural resource survey will help the town to prioritize future restoration work, a release said. "We are pleased and grateful to receive this Preserve New York grant to help us achieve full protection of our historic gravesites and burying grounds, which are such an important historic cultural resource," said East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc. More than 32 applicants in 25 counties statewide will receive grants totaling $297,995 in 2021, the town said. "We are proud to continue our partnership with the Preservation League of New York State to support projects that foster community, and celebrate our state's rich history" said Mara Manus, NYSCA executive director.