Old Burial Hill
Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, New York
Marker Inscription
Vandalized by American Loyalist Benj. Thompson, later Count Rumford to build Fort Golgotha 1782 after hostilities ceased.
The Story
During the Revolutionary War, British-occupied Long Island suffered under harsh Loyalist rule, and Huntington's old burial ground became the scene of one of its most notorious indignities. In 1782, after the fighting had largely ended, the Loyalist officer Benjamin Thompson—the brilliant, opportunistic scientist later ennobled in Europe as Count Rumford—ordered a fort built directly atop this hill of graves. Soldiers reportedly tore up headstones to raise the earthworks, and the grim outpost earned the biblical name Fort Golgotha, the 'place of the skull.' The desecration outraged townspeople and became a lasting emblem of wartime occupation on Long Island.
Why it matters
This quiet hilltop captures how the Revolution's final months still brought hardship to occupied communities, and how the memory of a desecrated burial ground helped forge local identity and grievance in the new nation.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford)
Related events
- · Construction of Fort Golgotha (1782)
- · British occupation of Long Island
Themes & tags
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