SPENCERS-LORILLARDS, GREEN-WOOD

CEMETERIES have been popular ForgottenTour locales over the years; the inhabitants tend to be quiet, so my narration goes uninterrupted. FNY has visited the cemeteries of central Queens, both downtown and uptown Trinity, and Evergreens Cemetery on the Brooklyn-Queens border. The most frequent cemetery we have visited, though, is Green-Wood in Brooklyn with 5 separate tours over the years. The place is vast and I have tried to tour through different parts of the place each time.

In late August 2024, I walked through Green-Wood for the first time in several years and visited some old favorites as well as some new interments, which I’ll post about in dribs and drabs over the weeks and months. Here’s the gravesite of the Spencers and Lorillards, whose monument looks like a fat pencil seen from Border Avenue near the 36th Street side.

Pierre Lorillard (1763-1843) founded the Lorillard Tobacco Company, which is now the oldest tobacco company in existence. The Lorillard Snuff Mill was built in 1840 along the Bronx River, whose swift current was intrinsic in the formation of the industry that would spring up alongside it. It is now a landmark contained within the NY Botanical Garden. A street called Lorillard Place in Belmont is named for the family.

Pierre Lorillard IV is also interred here. He owned the Tuxedo Park Club in Rockland County and designed a new tailless formal jacket named for the club. The Spencer and Lorillard family intermarried and their plots are alongside each other in the Cemetery. William Augustus Spencer perished on the Titanic and his stone notes the tragedy.

On a personal note, the memorial stone maker I hired informed me that the memorial marker I ordered has been installed at the plot in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Troy for my grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and stepgrandfather, fulfilling an ambition I have had for years. At age 67, I figured , “if not now, when and if not me, who?”

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11/19/24