GRAVE TALES
Cemetery tour produces tragic, bizarre stories
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Gloria May promised not to tell ghost stories, but spared nothing about the murder, madness and untimely deaths of some people buried at Greenridge Cemetery in Saratoga Springs.
She led more than 75 people on a stroll through the site on Wednesday, sponsored by Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation.
“It’s deadly quiet in here,” said May, as visitors walked beneath the iron, arched gate on Lincoln Avenue.
The first stop was at the grave of Union Army 1st Lt. Stephen Pierce, 37, who was killed at Fort Steadman, Va. — just 15 days before the Civil War ended.
“He wanted to go home to his family,” May said. “He put in for leave and was refused.”
A short distance away, she showed people where Capt. Sumner Oakley, a fellow member of the Saratoga County-based 77th Regiment, was laid to rest. He was killed in the same rifle pit, or fox hole, as Pierce.
One of the cemetery’s most poignant headstones is for Willoby S. McMillen, a 21-year-old train engineer, who died following a tragic rail accident on a bridge near Whitehall on Dec. 2, 1853. The train fell on its side and the span collapsed.
“Willoby survived, but he got stuck between the engine and tender (coal car),” May said. “They had
"They had to amputate both of his legs below the knees to get him free. You did not survive a double amputation in 1853." — Gloria May, relating the death of Willoby S. McMillen
to amputate both of his legs below the knees to get him free. You did not survive a double amputation in 1853.”
His headstone includes a carving of a train engine and tender.
The most unique headstone marks the grave of Saratogian publisher John Knickerbacker Walbridge (1870-1933). When he died, the newspaper ran a big front-page article, with a large photo of him. The metal type set used to print the page became part of his headstone.
People had to walk throughout the cemetery to see the many different places Walworth family members are buried. The family became quite prominent and its name held in high regard when Reuben Hyde Walworth was named first Chancellor of New York, the state’s highest judicial office, in 1828.
But all that changed forever on June 3, 1873 when Walworth’s grandson, Frank, shot and killed his father, Mansfield Walworth in New York City. Mansfield had abused his wife, Ellen, for many years and threatened to kill her after they were divorced.
Frank tried to protect his mother (Ellen) and confronted Mansfield.
“But he made the mistake of bringing a gun,” May said.
Frank was sentenced to second-degree murder, later acquitted on grounds of insanity and sent to an asylum. Although eventually released, his life was ruined.
Ellen Walworth gained fame as a co-founder of Daughters of the American Revolution. Her daughter, Reubena, died from typhoid fever that she contracted while treating U.S. soldiers returning home from Cuba after the Spanish-American War.
Partly because of the murder, and partly because of religious differences between Catholic and Protestant family members, Walworth graves are in several different locations.
Another bizarre tale surrounds the life and death of Caleb Mitchell, a popular president of the village of Saratoga Springs before it became an incorporated city. He ran a gambling establishment, which state Senator Edgar Truman Brackett, one of the Spa City’s most prestigious citizens, had closed down.
This caused Mitchell’s financial ruin. One day, he went to Brackett’s law office, in present-day City Hall, bent on getting revenge with a gun.
But discovering Brackett wasn’t there, Mitchell turned the gun on himself and committed suicide, the same as his mother and two brothers before him, by different means.
“He slid down the door and blood ran under Brackett’s door,” May said.
Brackett, among his many accomplishments, is credited for preserving the city’s mineral springs along with Spencer Trask, and Brackett’s son, Charles, became a famous Academy Award-winning filmmaker with Billy Wilder.
However, this family, too, had its share of tragedy as 9-year-old Edgar Brackett Jr. shot himself while playing with a toy gun during Fourth of July festivities. A short time later he died of tetanus.
The Brackett family plot is marked by one of the cemetery’s tallest spires. Edgar Brackett Sr., Edgar Brackett Jr. and Charles Brackett are all buried there.