Vale Cemetery 907 State Street Schenectady New York 12307
518-346-0423
FAMOUS INTERMENTS
In addition to the re-interments from the Dutch Reformed Church, there were more re-interments: the Schermerhorn family from the Bellevue area; the Van Guysling family from Van Slyck’s Island and a substantial number of Revolutionary War soldiers discovered while extending Lafayette Street from Liberty Street to Union Street. There are burial plots owned by the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic – Civil War era), Spanish American War Veterans and the American Legion. There is a grand memorial – a dynasty plot – for Mordecai Myers who was a distinguished Major in the War of 1812. Myers was also prominent as a past Grand Master of the Masons of the State of New York and as the City’s only Jewish Mayor. Colonel Christopher Yates was an officer in the Revolutionary War, a prominent Mason and the founder and first Master of St. George’s Lodge, the oldest in the City.
There is a grand assortment of famous people here in Vale Cemetery from Dr. Samuel Quinlin, a past Grand Exalted Leader of the Elks to the Reverend William Elliot Griffis, a former pastor of the First Reformed Church who helped to establish the public educational system in Japan and wrote “The Mikado’s Empire”.
The Industrial Age around the beginning of the 20th century is well represented with such towering figures as Charles Proteus Steinmetz (the “Electrical Wizard”) who developed the use of alternating current; Howard Wright who left the young General Electric Co. to establish the Schenectady Varnish Works; his son Henry DeForest Wright developed the company into the Schenectady Chemical Co. which grew to become Schenectady International (SI, Inc) and now the global company known as the SI Group. There are the Ellis brothers who developed the American Locomotive Works and whose family members went on to many other civic endeavors including building Ellis Hospital. And there is the Clute family whose members owned a foundry that built the turret engine for the ironclad Monitor in the Civil War. This only a small sample of the famous and not so famous who are buried in Vale Cemetery. There are about 33,000 burials here and room for many, many more. For more info, see History and Notables
Building a CREMATORY
In 1990 the planning process began to build a crematory. The plans were developed and the necessary permits obtained to accommodate the increasing preference of many families to choose cremation over in ground burial. The first unit went on line in November of 1995 and was so successful that a second one unit was installed in 2002.
Vale Cemetery does about 800 cremations a year!! Vale Cemetery is currently planning for the construction of a beautifully landscaped Urn Garden to accommodate the growing demand for a suitable area in which to bury cremated remains.
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