Bygone Hudson Valley

The Hunt family burial ground is a small cemetery located just off of Hunt Road on land now owned by the Town of Plattekill. Surrounded by a crumbling stone wall, it measures approximately 30 feet by 45 feet and sits on what was once a prosperous 244-acre farm. The farm first belonged to Daniel and Mary Burch Hunt, Orange County residents who made their way north to settle in the Town of Plattekill.

According to the Ulster County Commemorative Biography, “the Hunt residence in Orange County was frequently visited by General Washington and his staff during the Revolutionary War, the army being camped very near the old home place. As a token of respect and appreciation for her hospitality the General presented Mrs. Hunt with a mahogany box with little drawers filled with tea” (1185). The Hunts had 17 children, most of whom were born in Orange County.

Around the year 1796, Daniel and Mary Hunt purchased a 180-acre farm in what was then the Town of New Marlborough. Upon their deaths, Daniel and Mary, both members of the Plattekill Valley Presbyterian Church, were buried in grounds adjoining that church (Plattekill Community Ground).

The farm passed to son James, who expanded it to 244 acres. James and his wife Phoebe were members of the Plattekill Valley Presbyterian Church, but upon their deaths were buried on the family farm, as were three of their five children, Esther Ann Hunt Du Bois, James Hunt and Phebe Maria. After the death of her parents, Phebe took over the farm and had it farmed by shares.

Phebe Maria Hunt passed away in 1895, at the age of 59, at which point burials ceased on the property. As part of her last will and testament, dated August 19, 1884, Phebe donated the land where her family was buried to the Town of Plattekill:

two-thirds of the cleared part of the field wherein my Father and Mother and others are buried situate on the south west part of my farm and bounded on the south by lands of Mr. Ward, on the west by Mr. Stanfield and on the south east by the road….to the said town and its successors or assigns for the uses and purposes of a cemetery or place of burial and for no other use or purpose whatever.” 

Town of Plattekill Supervisor William H. Fowler accepted this donation on behalf of the town on March 13, 1896.

When historians J. Wilson Poucher and Byron Terwilliger visited the cemetery in the 1920s, they found 10 stones with discernable inscriptions (https://ulster.nygenweb.net/platcem.htm.) According to former Town of Plattekill Historian Muriel Obermeyer, unrecorded burials were purported to have been made on the property outside the small walled family plot since the land was turned over to the town; at one point a Plattekill resident with a background in archeology offered to conduct an examination of the property to determine just how many – if any – people were buried there. (His offer was refused by the town.)

Today, the ten headstones and various footstones in the small grounds are in fair condition, with many of the inscriptions still legible. The cemetery is not one of those regularly maintained by the Town of Plattekill. Instead, it is periodically maintained by a neighboring landowner who leases the property from the Town of Plattekill. The lease stipulates that the tenant keep the cemetery “in good and presentable condition, including but not limited to keeping access road in an open and passable condition at all time (including snow plowing), maintenance and repair of the stone wall and the repair and frequent mowing of grass as needed.” This agreement has resulted in the Hunt Cemetery being one of the more accessible and cared-for family graveyards in the Town of Plattekill.

Sources:

Anson, Shirley and ElizabethWerlau. Hallowed Grounds: Historic Cemeteries of the Town of Plattekill, New York.

Poucher, J. Wilson and Byron Terwilliger. Old gravestones of Ulster County, New York : twenty-two-thousand inscriptions. unknown: unknown, 1931.