u/SupaSly7

Found some beautiful sunflowers on our walk today

I love finding ways to use photographs to explore the inside of mausoleums and crypts. 👻

Found an old bus. And this old gristmill >> gypsum-grinding mill >> sawmill >> cloth mill >> cement works >> doorknob factory >> marble-cutting mill >> knitting mill >> scythe and blade factory >> pottery factory >> commune

I have spent a lot of hours exploring Vale Cemetery and the other old burial grounds scattered around upstate NY. After a while, you begin to recognize the rhythms: the grand monuments to defy oblivion, family plots crowded with local names, and the small stones quietly shrinking into the earth.

Some gravestones reflect entire dynasties.
So many others offer only mystery.

In the old County Lot at Vale, a choked, weathered stone leans into the ground, exhausted from holding its secret:

LITTLE STRANGER
DIED
APRIL 10, 1884

The stone caught my attention. It felt unusually haunting and lonely even for a cemetery. What I did not know then was that inscription was the final line in a very short story, beginning three days earlier in (yes, IN) the Mohawk River.

Shortly after noon on Monday, April 7, 1884, a fisherman named William Shutter was working on the Mohawk when a market basket became tangled in his fishing lines. Inside the basket, concealed beneath heavy paper and a blanket, he discovered the body of a newborn boy.

The Schenectady Evening Star reported that physicians examined the child and determined that he had been strangled shortly after birth. The newspaper gave the story the grim headline “Born to be Murdered.”

The child’s body was brought to the undertaking establishment of Charles N. Yates, a Schenectady businessman who operated both an undertaking service and a furniture store. Often, furniture makers also served the funeral trade as they possessed the tools needed to construct coffins.

Women from the city reportedly came to the undertaking rooms to visit the child and pay their respects. On April 9, the Evening Star announced the baby would be buried the following day in Vale Cemetery’s county burial plot.

So, best I can tell, the date carved beneath “Little Stranger” was probably his burial date, not the date of his death and on Thursday, April 10, 1884, Schenectady buried a child whose name no one knew.

While the newspaper report openly blamed the baby’s mother, relying mostly on assumptions and the merciless language of the period, their accusations were never established as fact.

But death, like life, has always had its class system so Little Stranger rests in Vale’s old County Lot, the public-burial section associated with its Potter’s Field.

Its where Schenectady buried the poor, unclaimed or unidentified. The graves did not receive carved angels or polished granite, many with nothing more than “Unknown Man.”

Rest In Peace, Little Stranger. 💜

I photographed this marker at Hillside Cemetery, in Burnt Hills, New York.

It identifies Joseph and Abigail Bettys, respected local innkeepers and the “unfortunate parents” of Joseph Bettys Jr., convicted traitor and spy, who was hanged in 1782.

That phrase sent me down a historical rabbit hole.
Joseph Jr. began the American Revolution as a Patriot. In 1776, he enlisted under Captain Samuel Van Vechten and Colonel Cornelius D. Wynkoop. After some trouble with military discipline, Ballston settler John Ball helped him secure a position in the American fleet on Lake Champlain.

The fleet was commanded by Benedict Arnold, who was still an American hero at the time.
Bettys fought aboard the gunboat Philadelphia during the Battle of Valcour Island.

When the Philadelphia sank, he transferred to the row galley Washington, where he was captured by British forces commanded by Guy Carleton.

American General David Waterbury reportedly praised Bettys for his courage.

Then Bettys switched sides.

By 1777, he was working for the British as a scout, courier, recruiter, guide, and intelligence agent. After General John Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga, Bettys reportedly carried news of the defeat to other British forces.

American authorities captured him in Westchester County in 1779. He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to death.

Then Philip Schuyler intervened.

On July 4, 1779, George Washington pardoned Joseph Bettys.

Bettys responded to this extraordinary second chance by returning to British espionage.

He resumed recruiting Loyalists and carrying intelligence throughout the Ballston, Albany, Saratoga, and Tryon County regions.

He was also connected to the Great Kidnap Plot of 1781, an attempt to capture prominent Patriot leaders.

Later stories claimed Bettys was supposed to kidnap Philip Schuyler. Evidence suggests his target was actually Dr. Samuel Stringer, while British agent John Walden Meyers was assigned to capture Schuyler. The plot failed, although Schuyler’s Albany mansion was attacked.

Bettys later became an ensign in the British King’s Rangers.

In March 1782, an American search party reportedly followed his footprints through fresh snow to a cabin belonging to a man named Hawkins. Bettys was surprised while eating and allegedly tried to destroy a packet containing coded papers and a British payment order.
He was captured again and taken to Albany.

New York Governor George Clinton wrote to Washington that Bettys was examined on April 1 and immediately ordered court-martialed.

Many accounts claim he was hanged that same day, but Clinton’s letter proves he was still alive. His exact execution date remains uncertain, though he was hanged sometime later in 1782.

He was reportedly buried in an unmarked grave in Albany.

The strangest part to me is that Joseph Bettys Jr. once fought under Benedict Arnold when both men were celebrated American Patriots.

Both later betrayed the American cause.
Arnold escaped to British protection and died in London.

Bettys was captured twice, pardoned once by George Washington, caught again because of tracks in the snow, and hanged as a spy.

His parents remained here in Burnt Hills, where more than two centuries later, their family marker still remembers them as the “unfortunate parents” of one of Revolutionary New York’s most persistent traitors.

I saw this headstone while walking through Albany Rural Cemetery and had to stop. The Sherlock Holmes engraving was unusual enough, but the inscription underneath it was even better:

Artist. Illustrator. Sherlockian.

This is Frederic Dorr Steele. Beginning in 1903, he illustrated Arthur Conan Doyle’s revived Sherlock Holmes stories for Collier’s Weekly.

He eventually created more than 165 Holmes illustrations and helped cement the image we still picture today: the deerstalker, curved pipe, sharp profile, and expression of a man who solved the crime twenty minutes ago. They became some of the most recognizable Sherlock Holmes artwork ever created.

Here is the part that really got me: Steele died in 1944, and his ashes were placed in an old family plot at Albany Rural Cemetery the following year.

But his own grave remained unmarked for roughly 75 years.

In 2020, Sherlock Holmes fans, historians, and Steele’s descendants organized a campaign to finally give him a proper marker. The result is the stone in this photo, complete with one of his most famous creations standing beside his name.

Honestly, this may be the ultimate piece of fan art.

The man who helped make Sherlock Holmes visually immortal spent three-quarters of a century in an unmarked grave.

Then the Sherlockians found him.

Two weathered stones. One woven story.

Elisha Williams, Revolutionary War veteran, rests beside his wife Lucy, whose journeys were joined every step from colonial Connecticut to New York’s frontier.

Their family shared roots with the Williams lineage that gave rise to Williams College, but their greatest legacy was the life they built together.

More than 200 years later, these graves stand as a quiet reminder that history isn’t only found on battlefields and in books, but in the enduring stones of those who formed a nation.

📍High Point Cemetery • Knox, New York

Another forgotten industrial scar where fire, decay, and nature have shaped the landscape. Every brick representing the people, the work and the lives that once filled this space.

This carved slate is the grave of Captain John Higginson. He died in 1718. His family were among some of Salem’s most powerful voices.

His father served as a magistrate during the Salem Witch Trials, questioning the accused as suspicion became conviction.

His grandfather, Salem’s first minister, would later distance himself and defend some of those accused.

Even the Higginsons were victims of the hysteria. John’s aunt, Ann Dolliver, was herself accused and imprisoned.

Standing here, at this stone, the history is thick and sticky - and it refuses to cleanly carve itself into heroes and villains.

It expects us instead to reflect, especially now, on how quickly ordinary people, authority, fear, and faith can reshape the lives of the innocent.