HistoricSiteMarkers
Colonial AmericaEarly Republic

Prospect Cemetery

New York, Queens County, New York

Marker Inscription

Original Jamaica town burying ground, established 1660. Egbert Benson born 1746 died 1833, buried here. First Attorney General N.Y. State. State Education Department 1936

The Story

When Dutch and English settlers laid out the town of Jamaica on western Long Island in 1660, they set aside this ground to bury their dead — making it one of the oldest cemeteries in what is now New York City. Among those interred here is Egbert Benson (1746–1833), a Revolutionary-era statesman who served as the first Attorney General of New York State and later sat in the Continental Congress and the U.S. House. The marker, placed by the State Education Department in 1936, ties a quiet colonial burying ground to the men who helped build the early republic.

Why it matters

A single plot of ground here spans the arc from a 17th-century colonial settlement to the founding generation that framed New York's and the nation's earliest governments, preserving the memory of an often-overlooked architect of American law.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

When settlers laid out the town of Jamaica on western Long Island in 1660, they were establishing one small community among many in a corner of the world where Dutch and English influence overlapped and jostled. To found a town in that era was to make a set of very practical decisions all at once — where to build, where to worship, and, unavoidably, where to bury the dead.

Setting aside ground for a burying place was among the first civic acts of a new settlement. It was a statement of permanence: these families intended to stay, to raise generations here, and to keep their forebears close. The plot established at Jamaica in 1660 became one of the oldest such grounds in what would eventually be swallowed into the vast city of New York.

That long horizon is what gives this place its unusual reach. It was born in the colonial 17th century, endured through the founding of a new nation, and now sits within one of the densest urban landscapes on earth — a single patch of consecrated ground that has quietly outlasted nearly everything around it.

People & events

Among those laid to rest here is Egbert Benson (1746–1833), and his is a life that carries you straight into the making of both New York and the United States. He served as the first Attorney General of New York State — the man charged with defining that office at the very moment the state itself was new and its laws were being written from something close to a blank page.

His public service reached well beyond the state. Benson sat in the Continental Congress during the era when the American cause was being argued and organized, and he later served in the United States House of Representatives under the new federal government. His was the generation that did the unglamorous, essential work of turning revolutionary ideals into functioning institutions — courts, statutes, and legislatures that had to actually run.

The marker itself has a small history worth noting: it was placed by the State Education Department in 1936, part of a broader effort to fix in public memory the people and places that shaped the state's early life. That a burying ground from 1660 should hold a figure like Benson knits two chapters of American history — colonial settlement and national founding — into a single plot of earth.

Its place in the American story

Benson belongs to the founding generation, the framers and builders whose names are far less familiar than a Washington or a Jefferson but whose work was every bit as necessary. Someone had to be the first attorney general, to sit in the early Congresses, to translate the abstractions of liberty into the concrete machinery of law. That is the kind of nation-building this quiet grave commemorates.

The ground around him tells an even longer story. From a 1660 colonial settlement to the framing of a state and a republic, this single burying place spans the whole arc from Old World transplant to new American government. Few sites let you stand within a distance you could pace off and touch both the 17th century and the founding era at once.

That such a place survives inside modern New York City is significant in itself. As the metropolis grew up and over the old towns of Long Island, grounds like this one preserved a physical link to origins that would otherwise be entirely paved over — keeping the memory of an often-overlooked architect of American law within reach of anyone willing to look.

If you visit

Come to this place ready to be surprised by its age. In the middle of a modern cityscape, you are standing on ground set aside for the dead in 1660 — older than the nation, older than the state, older than almost anything you can see around it. That contrast between the roar of the present and the deep stillness of the site is the heart of the experience.

Seek out the sense of layered time. This is a colonial burying ground that also holds a statesman of the Revolutionary and early-republic years, so a single walk here carries you across more than a century and a half of history without your ever leaving the grounds. Let the weathered stones and the 1936 marker remind you how many hands worked to keep this memory from vanishing.

As a stop, it makes a quietly powerful counterpoint to the city around it — a reminder that New York's story did not begin with skyscrapers. Take a slow, respectful turn through the grounds, find your way to the memory of the man who helped write the young state's first laws, and let this small, surviving patch of the 17th century put the modern city in a much longer perspective.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · Egbert Benson

Related events

  • · Founding of the Jamaica town burying ground (1660)

Themes & tags

American RevolutionMemorial

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