# New Yorkers, We MUST Tour THIS Cemetery!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [May 25, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484 "2003-05-25T23:58:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/1 "2003-05-25T23:58:44Z")
[Woodlawn](http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/famousSearch.cgi?mode=cemetery&FScemeteryid=66788), in the Bronx. The topic came up in that Pearl White thread, so I looked it up, and zowie! More show-biz people than you can shake a stick at, if that’s what you enjoy.
Besides political, sports and other celebs, we have the graves of Nora Bayes, Irving Berlin, Vernon and Irene Castle, George M. Cohan, Lotta Crabtree, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Olive Thomas and Marilyn Miller (both married to Jack Pickford, poor girls), Florence Mills, Smith _and_ Dale, Laurette Taylor, Nat Wills . . . Do let’s arrange a summer trip? I’ll get in touch and see if and when tours are conducted.
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### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/2 "2003-05-26T03:26:15Z")
Well, if I could afford to come to New York, and that good-lookin’ mod from the last tour was going to be there, I would show up. But I’m afraid for now you will have to count me as present in spirit only. Sigh.
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/3 "2003-05-26T03:39:59Z")
Baker, Eve seems to prefer people there in spirit only, or else she’d spend less time in cemeteries.
Eve, if you’re ever in Chicago, we should do the [Chicago Ghost Tour](http://www.ghosttours.com/), though the Haunted Pub Crawl is more SDMB. Or visit the final resting place of Oscar Mayer, Charles Schwab, Montgomery Ward, and Richard Sears (I don’t know where they buried Roebuck) at the [Rosehill Cemetery.](http://www.graveyards.com/rosehill/)
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/4 "2003-05-26T03:42:08Z")
Wait a second! Eve posted this TODAY, a SUNDAY! Darling, have you finally gotten a home computer?
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### Author:  [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/5 "2003-05-26T04:43:41Z")
I’ll come only if I get to tell the story of the strange death of John Purroy Mitchel, youngest chief exec of NYC, aka “The Boy Mayor.”
PS – I can’t wait to see this guy’s grave.
Geoffrey Spence Millet
He died on his birthday by falling on an ink eraser evading six young woman trying to give him a birthday kiss in offices of the Metropolitan Life Building.
What a way to go, eh?
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/6 "2003-05-26T14:02:55Z")
Did you miss all my addle-pated “ **Help! I Don’t Know What the Hell I’m Doing!** ” computer threads in GQ?
The forum, I mean, not the magazine . . .
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### Author:  [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/7 "2003-05-26T14:49:09Z")
And if you’re ever in Atlanta, you should check out the [Oakland Cemetery](http://oaklandcemetery.com/). Very cool place.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/8 "2003-05-26T15:36:14Z")
I want to be with the cool kids and go to the cemetary!
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### Author:  [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/9 "2003-05-26T15:54:45Z")
More dead people! Cool!
Howzabout throwing some Barbie Twins into the bargain?
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### Author:  [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/10 "2003-05-26T16:00:05Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by stuyguy \*
> I’ll come only if I get to tell the story of the strange death of John Purroy Mitchel, youngest chief exec of NYC, aka “The Boy Mayor.”
Sure, **stuyguy** , don’t you just love showing up the tour guides with your mayoral trivia.
And I don’t know if we should indulge **Eve** on this one. Go on a cemetary tour wiht her one weekend, and the next one she’s asking to go on another. If we let her get away with this, the next thing you know it’ll be nothing but crypts and tombstones from her all the time.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/11 "2003-05-26T16:36:08Z")
You say that like it’s a _bad_ thing? C’mon along, **Monstro** –the more, the, ummm, “merrier?”
Once we get some more info and a date set up, I will ask Thea how much to rent the Barbie Twins for an afternoon.
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/12 "2003-05-26T19:41:03Z")
I’ve spent hours in Woodlawn! it’s the BEST.
We’ve got to look for the old willow tree near Herman Melville’s grave…that’s where, one dark night some seventy years ago, bagman Dr. Jafsie Cordon handed over $50,000 to the man later identified as Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
Lt. Commander George Washington De Long, master of the _Jeanette_, famed for freezing to death during a secret expedition to the Arctic, has a very nifty monument.
Mayor LaGuardia also has a very cool stone.
And one of my all-time favorite memorials is there, too…the Anna Blaksley Bliss sculpture group.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/13 "2003-05-26T21:43:56Z")
Sooo, do they actually have tours, or do we just wander aimlessly about, getting lost and eventually have our bleached bones found somewhere near Olive Thomas’ mausoleum? 22 acres, I hear, and I’ll wager all the good graves are _not_ conveniently near one another . . .
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### Author:  [@Phelan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phelan)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/14 "2003-05-26T22:09:08Z")
The cemetary that I have jogged through before, has every single type of tree that exists in the north eastern part of North America.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/15 "2003-05-26T23:34:16Z")
Ah, but does it have _tombs_ of famous _dead_ trees?
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### Author:  [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2003, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/16 "2003-05-26T23:53:40Z")
I suppose I owe Melville a visit, since I ripped off his character for my _nom-de-plume_ here…
…although I would prefer not to.
[d&r]
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### Author:  [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/17 "2003-05-27T00:53:11Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Eve \*
> \*\*Sooo, do they actually have tours, or do we just wander aimlessly about…? \*\*
Dunno. I’ve only gone about with my trusty _Permanent New Yorkers_ in hand. Did I mention the Huntington moneybags mausoleum? Wow. Huge. Plus there’s a nice monument nearby to his mistress.
They DO give you groovy celebrity grave maps at the office and are generally welcoming to tourists, as opposed to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood, which until a few years ago treated you like you’d walked in wearing huge Army boots specifically to kick over tombstones.
Wandering aimlessly about got me to Bat Masterson, Miles Davis, Alexander Archipenko, Nellie Bly, Admiral Farragut, James Montgomery Flagg, W.C. Handy, Otto Preminger, Joseph Pulitzer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Ruth Snyder. Not too shabby, eh?
Oooops, forgot to mention Fritz Kreisler, the great concert violinist and forger!
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### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/18 "2003-05-27T01:22:07Z")
Psst **Uke**
you should tell everyone there is a tour and it is 5 bucks a head and then reveal that you are the tour guide.
I wanted to go to the last one and would like to come to this one. Does the subway go there?
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### Author:  [@Phelan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phelan)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/19 "2003-05-27T01:32:48Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Eve \*
> \*\*Ah, but does it have _tombs_ of famous _dead_ trees? \*\*
Uhhhhhhhhhhh…suuuuuuure…um
It has the tomb of that little tree that wanted to be a christmas tree but got left behind because it’s too darn small, uhhhh that tree that was in Citizen Kane… and um… a tomb for the only pear tree that Jonny Appleseed ever planted!!!
Also there are tombs of famous Canadian people that are not tree related.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2003, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-yorkers-we-must-tour-this-cemetery/177484/20 "2003-05-27T01:40:53Z")
Elizabeth Cady Stanton _and_ Ruth Snyder? The Happiness Girls? I am _so_ there.
OK, I’ll find out about tours, and lacking them, we will shanghai **Ike** and his book, and find a weekend everyone can make it this summer. Barbie Twins optional.
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