Who’s Buried in Snake Hill?

Here is my re-typed version of a typewritten letter from Carol Bates, of New Windsor, which was received at TBJ on or about April 29, 2009. It includes the title: “Inscriptions on stones in a Hebrew Cemetery located on west side of Snake Hill, near Crystal Lake in the city of Newburgh, N.Y.”

 Adelberg, Sophie, b. 1870, d. Sept. 16, 1895 (NOTE: In the first version of this document, I typed that Ms. Adelberg died in “1918.” This was the year printed on the typewritten letter I have from Mrs. Bates. But today my husband and I visited the cemetery and saw that on her headstone it clearly gives Ms. Adelberg’s date of death as Sept. 16, 1895. This revision is important, because it means that as far as we know at this moment, no one was ever buried in Snake Hill Cemetery after it was bought by Temple Beth Jacob in 1916. In fact, only 3 people had been buried there in the previous 10 years — one in 1907, one in 1908 and one in 1909. There was also a person, Lena Friedman, buried there in March 1906.)

Applebaum, Morris, d. Nov. 1, 1892, age 3

Blechman, Minnie, d. April 27, 1900, age 56 years

Friedman, Lena, wife of Hyman Hoffman, d. March 19, 1906, age 52 years

Hoffman, Heyman, son of Herman Hoffman, b. 1899, d. 1900

Hoffman, Rebecca, daughter of Herman Hoffman, b. Aug. 2, 1876, d. May 15, 1897

Koplan, Abraham, son of Simon Koplan, b. Sept. 9, 1896, d. Oct. 19, 1899

Levey, Abraham, b. Feb. 21, 1897, d. Dec. 4, 1901

Levey, Ruth, b. Oct. 11, 1898, d. Dec. 14, 1901

Pinckes, Blanche, b. March 29, 1897, d. Dec. 19, 1903

Pinckes, Nathan, b. Oct. 6, 1871, d. Jan. 10, 1904 (NOTE: This name was not among those on Ms. Bates’ list, but Tim and I added it when we saw this headstone during our tour of the cemetery today.)

Rehr, Sam, d. Jan. 10, 1909, age 41 years

Rider, Abraham, b. Dec. 7, 1900, d. April 9, 1907

Singer, Ignatz, b. 1865, d. 1908

Zimmerman, Rosie, d. Jan. 6, 1900, age 47

In addition to the above, the 8^th and 9^th-graders of TBJ, during a cleanup of the cemetery on April 26, 2009, also saw the “double headstone” of two “kohens,” a father and son whose inscription indicated they might have “fallen” together in some kind of disaster that might have involved a physical attack on them. Rabbi Freedman believed the stone indicates that they were “martyrs” in some way. Last week, however, Simon Rottenberg of Kiryas Joel visited the cemetery with me (see recent post about it) and said he believes this father and son were merely in an “accident” together.

The kids also saw the relatively well-kept stone of Thelma Dorothy Levinson, mother of Newburgh’s famous “Broadway” Sam Levinson, owner of a popular dry-goods store on B’way and president in the 1950s of the Broadway Businessmen’s Association. But dammit, i sit here at the moment unable to find any record in my files of her date of death. i’ll have to remember to look that up on my next trip out there.

If anybody “Out There” has any info on any of these people or their descendants, feel free to forward it to me, hey?