Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery

Behind the stone church on 96th St. in the Woodhaven section of Queens is the Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery. The cemetery isn't visible from the sidewalk and is surrounded by wooden fencing. The cemetery's marked graves date back to 1793 and up to 1892. The Wyckoff and Snediker families donated land from their neighboring farms in 1785 to create the burial ground lot of a half-acre, when Woodhaven was still rural. The cemetery was listed on the New York and National Registers of Historic Places in 2001. The inactive cemetery land was purchased by the neighboring church in the 1960s and is currently not readily accessible to the public.

In the early twentieth century, there were nearly two dozen family cemeteries in Queens; by 2001, there were only a dozen left. At least two, including the Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery, have been listed on the National Register (the other is the Riker-Lent Family Cemetery in Steinway, listed with the surviving Lent Homestead). A few others have been designated New York City landmarks.

Over 130 of the marked graves have Wyckoff or Snediker surnames. Other families interred in marked graves include Eldert, Sudyam, Shaw, Hendricks, and Lott; they represent the residents of the area's farms. Some locals were buried instead in the cemetery of the Dutch Reformed Church at New Lots in Brooklyn (also a Clio entry). Gravemarkers range from fieldstone and brownstone to granite and marble. Some have symbols carved into them that were popular funerary art in the Victorian era, like a weeping willow tree or a faded rose. The oldest marked grave appears to be of John Lott, who died on September 13th 1793. The lone large, upright monument in an obelisk style is made of polished granite and is for the Eldert family. Garret V.W. Eldert (born 1824 - died 1890) was a hotel operator whose farm was near present-day Rockaway Blvd. and Atlantic Ave.

An attorney named William F. Wyckoff had the cemetery's inscriptions recorded around 1902 and incorporated into booklet form by Samuel Knapp Frost in 1912. The no-longer active cemetery was surveyed in October 1919 and graves were mapped; Brooklynite Mr. W. Eardeley documented over 20 private cemeteries in Queens. The head of the Queens Borough Topographical Department, Charles Underhill Powell, compiled Eardeley's results into a report published in 1932 (see the link below). The overall dimensions of the burial ground are about 266 ft. north-south by 80 ft. east-west. A perpetual footpath right-of-way connected Jamaica Avenue to the south end of the cemetery and was still visible on a 1933 local map; it has become an access road to the rear garages of nearby homes. There was a second footpath in the 1930s from the north end of the cemetery to Park Lane South; this path has been absorbed into the backyards of the nearby houses on 98th St.

The church adjacent to the cemetery was not associated with the burial ground historically. The present stone church was built in the mid-1920s (and also was listed in the National Register in 2001) to replace an earlier church dating to 1901. St. Matthew's Episcopal Church bought the abandoned Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery in the early 1960s for $500. The burial ground was often vandalized and had been seized and auctioned off by the City of New York for non-payment of taxes. Members of the parish, the Queens Historical Society, the Woodhaven Historical Society, and the St. Thomas the Apostle Woodhaven History Club have worked since the 1990s to reset fallen gravestones and clear the overgrown site of debris.

When the cemetery was documented for listing in the National register in 2001, the lot was bounded by a wooden stockade-style fence. Mature trees and flowering shrubs were among the plantings in the cemetery. In the 2010s, the church building changed hands from St. Matthew's Episcopal (which closed in 2011 and moved elsewhere) to All Saints Episcopal in 2013. Their website describes All Saints Episcopal as a "catholic parish of an Episcopal church." The new owners have worked to renovate the church building as well as the cemetery.

All Saints Episcopal Church. Home Page, All Saints Episcopal Church. January 1st 2022. Accessed May 25th 2022. http://www.allsaintswoodhaven.org/homepage.

Antos, Jason D. Wyckoff-Snediker Cemtery gets Unearthed, Queens Gazette. September 3rd 2014. Accessed May 31st 2022. https://www.qgazette.com/articles/wyckoff-snediker-cemetery-gets-unearthed/.

Find A Grave. Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery, Find A Grave. November 20th 2006. Accessed May 31st 2022. https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2197423/wyckoff-snedicker-family-cemetery.

French, Mary. Wyckoff-Snediker Cemetery, New York City Cemetery Project. March 3rd 2011. Accessed May 31st 2022. https://nycemetery.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/wyckoff-snediker-cemetery/.

Smith, Allan B. NRHP Nomination of Wyckoff-Snediker Family Cemetery, Queens County, New York. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 2001.

Powell, Charles U. Meigs, Alice H. Description of Private and Family Cemeteries in the Borough of Queens. Jamaica, NY. Long Island Collection, Queens Borough Public Library, 1932.