Creative History

            There are no headstones.           A narrow wrought iron gate off of 2nd Avenue opens and leads into a confined and claustrophobic alleyway.  This spot is barely visible from the sidewalk and most pedestrians walk by without giving the place even so much as a second glance. The alleyway ends in a small grassy clearing that is only a half acre  wide and enclosed by stone walls on all sides.  This is the New York Marble Cemetery and it is one of the smallest, most obscure and oddest burial grounds in all of America’s largest city.   At one time the official address of the New York Marble Cemetery was 41 and a half 2nd Avenue.  Just a few blocks over, there is another cemetery almost exactly like this one, though slightly less well hidden from public view, called the New York City Marble Cemetery.   These two cemeteries were opened in 1830 and 1831, respectively, at a time when burial underground in coffins was banned out of fear of contracting a disease by coming in c

  Across the Hudson River from West Point Military Academy at a place called Garrison’s Landing sits a lonely canoe on the frigid night of December 23, 1826. The canoe had been pre-placed, hidden among some scrub-brush and high weeds, along the frozen banks of the Hudson earlier in the week. Three cadets, William R. Burnley of Alabama, Alexander J. Center of New York and Samuel A. Roberts also of Alabama, quietly lug two gallon size barrels of whiskey and place them in the waiting canoe in the dead of night.   Originally that night, after a drinking binge at a place called Martin’s Tavern, the off-duty cadets had planned to land an even bigger cache of up to 4 gallons of whiskey, but after their drunken garrulous behavior nearly caused them to come to blows with the proprietor of the tavern over the bartering price of the booze, the cadets had been forced to pay a hefty sum for the two barrels that they were lucky enough to obtain.   This night, and the subsequent Christmas p

  Early morning, London, England, May 23, 1701. It is windy, rainy and unseasonably cold.   A crowd has gathered around the place called Execution Dock in the neighborhood of Wapping along the banks of the River Thames.  The cold wind whips an icy spray onto the faces of all those assembled, but the crowd standing before the single raised gallows remains pensive and still. Execution Dock, located just beyond the low-tide mark of the River Thames, is reserved solely for those who have been found guilty of committing crimes against the British Admiralty on the high seas. Those who commit mutiny, murder, smuggling even sodomy while at sea all meet a cruel and very public end hanging from a shortened rope on this single wooden gallows. On this day the condemned is the famous Captain William Kidd--found guilty of murder and piracy against the British Crown. He has languished in prison, first in the dank Stone Prison of Boston in the American Colonies and then in the infamous N