Ralph Gardner Jr., pondering the many virtues of Halloween, clears his head among the old headstones
Another year. Another Halloween without an invitation to a costume party.
There are only two occasions when I feel old in this town (not counting when I’m in the throes of physical therapy). One is when younger people rush past me on the stairs leaving the subway. And then there’s Halloween.
I’m too senior to trick or treat for candy; I was being called out for that by the time I was 13. And adult Halloween parties, an annual rite of jettisoned inhibitions, seems the province of 20-somethings.
For several years I sat on the steps of a friend’s brownstone, drank scotch and handed out candy to little kids. Our respective spouses were also present. But lately I’ve been upstate on Halloween and it’s not the same thing.
One might think the land of Ichabod Crane would be the perfect place to celebrate the holiday—the one-room schoolhouse where Jesse Merwin, a teacher said to be the model for the protagonist in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” is at the end of our road in Kinderhook, N. Y.—but nothing beats New York City when it comes to All Hallows’ Eve.
There’s no comparison between trick or treating house-to-house in a rural village and the efficiency with which you can gather individual-serving-size Twix, Nestlé Crunch and Peanut M&M’s—ludicrous abundance enough to last through Thanksgiving, if not Christmas—by going from apartment to apartment in the average high-rise.
ENLARGEAnd after you graduate from college, no single occasion re-creates the bliss of bacchanalian undergraduate overindulgence as well as an NYC Halloween party, with perhaps a pregame appearance at the village Halloween parade.
Which was my excuse for loitering among the headstones and departed spirits at Trinity Church Cemetery in the Financial District in recent days.
Actually, that’s but a lame segue to pen a Halloween-themed column.
While cemeteries typically give me the creeps—I’m still not ready to discuss the virtues of burial versus cremation—I find the cemetery at Trinity Church oddly life-affirming.
Maybe not life-affirming, but centering.
It seems the perfect palliative to the madness and mood swings of nearby Wall Street; an oasis of grass, serenity and inarguable perspective amid the striving for success and domination that have fueled this city’s greatness since the Dutch, but nonetheless invariably ends in the graveyard.
The first plot where I stopped, on a tour with Anne Petrimoulx, Trinity’s archivist, was that of Richard Churcher who died in 1681 at age 5. The child was interred just north of the church in what was then a public burial ground.
His headstone, worn by the winds of time and the exhalations of a burgeoning city, is hard to read.
“Wall Street was the northern barrier of the colony” when the original Trinity church was built in 1698, Ms. Petrimoulx explained.
The current church dates to 1846.
To Richard Churcher’s left was the better-preserved tombstone of Anne Churcher, dead in 1691, who lived only to “11 years & 3 quarters. “We think it might be a sister,” the archivist said.
The cemetery’s most famous tombstone rests on the opposite side, the southern side of the church.
ENLARGE“Alexander Hamilton,” the inscription on his monument reads, “The patriot of incorruptible integrity. The soldier of approved valor. The statesman of consummate wisdom. Whose talents and virtues will be admired by grateful posterity long after this marble shall have mouldered into dust.”
He died July 12, 1804, at age 47, according to the marker (though Ms. Petrimoulx said there are questions regarding the year of his birth). No mention is made of the means of his untimely demise in a duel with Aaron Burr.
His wife, Eliza, lies beside him.
“He owned pew number 92,” the archivist said. “He had five of his children baptized here.”
“Eliza outlived him by a number of years,” she went on. “She was instrumental in carrying his legacy forward.”
Mr. Hamilton isn’t the only secretary of the Treasury buried at Trinity. The graveyard also contains the remains of Albert Gallatin, who served under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
“They did not get along,” Ms. Petrimoulx said, referring to Hamilton and Gallatin.
The cemetery also boasts five Revolutionary War generals and Robert Fulton, known for the development of the steamboat.
Ms. Petrimoulx couldn’t say for sure whether the success of the musical “Hamilton” has translated into greater foot traffic.
“They say in the play he’s buried in Trinity Church,” she reported, “and I have seen people posting online.”
It’s the only place most of us may eventually achieve a small measure of immortality.