“I’m a collector,” Jeff Richman, historian at the famous Green-Wood Cemetery of Brooklyn, says. “I was into stereo-opticons. I would go to these sales and auctions to buy the images, and they would have these pictures of Green-Wood Cemetery. And I would think, ‘That looks like a nice place.’
“Then one day in 1986, I saw that a professional photographer was giving a tour out there. This was when Green-Wood did not allow you to shoot pictures on the grounds, so I went. The next day, I think it was, I was back and I convinced them to give me a pass. I guess I convinced them I was crazy enough.”
Richman talks as we descend through the Central section at the Santa Barbara Cemetery. “I started looking around, and there was a lot of misinformation about who people were, and missing information. I thought maybe I could put together a book.
Sue Ramsey and Jeff Richman at the Santa Barbara Cemetery (Yes, he's holding my history of the Santa Barbara Cemetery, The Best Last Place.)
“Not long after, the cemetery approached me and said they’d been thinking about doing a book themselves. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’”
The result was Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure, published in 1998. He subsequently released two books detailing walking tours of the cemetery.
Since then, Richman dropped his law practice and became a fulltime cemetery historian. “We’ve done 4300 Civil War veteran bios,” obtaining hundreds of stones for those whose markers are missing. “I also manage the Friends of the Cemetery. They give tours out there.” He met his partner Joan, who is walking the Santa Barbara Cemetery with us, through the Friends. “She’s one of the volunteers.”
Richman is in town today and tomorrow at the invitation of Sue Ramsey and the Santa Barbara Genealogical Society. He’s giving two talks at the Society’s monthly presentation tomorrow. From 9:30 a.m. to Noon, he’ll be presenting ‘No Longer Forgotten: The Search for Civil War Veterans at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.’
His introduction to Sue Ramsey came through their shared interest in one particular Civil War veteran at Green-Wood, Capt. Samuel H. Sims, Company G, of the 51st New York State Volunteer Regiment. Ramsey, through a friend, was holding a treasure trove of personal letters from Capt. Sims. The friend had rescued the letters from an overflowing Montecito trash bin as a home was emptied out following the death of the owners. The letters were heart-felt and poignant and created an immediate connection across the decades. Ramsey launched into a research project to find out more about this man and his offspring.
Richman at the Grand Army of the Republic cannon at the Santa Barbara Cemetery. Cannon is one of a pair of cannons dedicated by the GAR in 1900. The cannons both saw action during the war.
Green-Wood, in close collaboration with Richman, had embarked on a project to restore their Civil War Soldiers Monument in 2002. The project was more than refurbished the stonework, however. Richman, initially had assumed there were roughly 500 Civil War vets at the cemetery. As part of the project, Richman determined to identify all the Civil War veterans he could at the cemetery, replace any unreadable stones, acquire new stones for any that were missing, and compile a book of the veteran’s letters, unfolding in sequence through the battles of the war. The project was planned for a rededication of the Monument, the new veteran’s markers, and of the book, on Memorial Day, 2007.
Sue Ramsey learned of the project in 2005. She sent Richman copies and transcriptions of Sim’s letters. They dovetailed perfectly with his work and for her part, she was determined, “by hook or by crook, I was going to go Brooklyn for that ceremony. ”
She made it.
By the time the event rolled around, Richman and his volunteer researchers had identified over 4300 Civil War vets in the grounds of Green-Wood. The book with transcriptions of the soldier’s letterswas released as Final Camping Ground: Civil War Veterans at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
His second talk this Saturday will be Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: Unearthing New York’s Buried Treasures, a more general overview of the cemetery and it’s population.
The talks will be held at the First Presbyterian Church, 21 N. Constance at State. You can read Jeff’s Green-Wood Cemetery blog at http://greenwooddiscovery.org/.