A Van Cortlandt visits Van Cortlandt Park

A man was walking in Van Cortlandt Park on Aug. 17, when he passed two people cleaning up Vault Hill, the historic Van Cortlandt family burial grounds. 

He said he was happy someone was finally taking care of the plot and a man holding a rake asked if he would like to help. The passerby joked that he would rather leave that work to the “commoners.”

Little did he know that he was talking to Sargent Morris McCormick Collier, a descendent of Jacobus Van Cortlandt.  At the behest of Mr. Collier, 28, he and Park Administrator Margot Perron were raking out the long-neglected and usually locked burial plot. Headstones and markers were removed in the 1960s due to vandalism, but the stone remnants to two of the vaults are still at the site.

The Manhattanite, who grew up in Massachusetts and Maine, is approximately twelve generations removed from Jacobus Van Cortlandt — the mayor of New York City from 1710 to 1719 who owned the land that is now Van Cortlandt Park. 

Jocobus Van Cortlandt’s son Frederick was responsible for building the Van Cortlandt House, which still stands in Vannie and is the oldest building in the Bronx. Frederick died before the house was finished and was buried atop what is now called Vault Hill in a stone and iron-enclosed cemetery. Before the Revolutionary War, City Clerk Augustus Van Cortlandt hid all of the city’s records in Vault Hill for fear that the British would destroy them. For eight years, the records were hidden in a vault beneath the cemetery. Many of those records he saved are in the city’s municipal archives in Manhattan. 

Other Van Cortlandts were buried at Vault Hill, but were moved to Woodlawn Cemetery after the family sold the land to the city and turned it into a park in 1888.

For the most part, the small cemetery, with an intricate wrought iron front gate and tall stone walls, has been neglected. The site has been littered with bottles, cans, lighters and other trash.

Mr. Collier was spurred to action, in part, after reading on the Parks Department website that his family is responsible for its upkeep.