My cousin married in a Quaker Meeting House in Pawling, NY (home of
the voice of "Darth Vader"). That one was on the site of the previous
one (an archaeological site) next to and where the first public outcry
against the practice of slavery was heard, it's said, in New York in
the 18th century. The replacement one (her nuptials were presided over
by a priest, a rabbi and a string quartet) had an interesting division
in the structure, where it was said, men and women were separated
during part of or all of a ceremony or all ceremonies. One mark of
Quaker cemeteries is no markers at all, one here in the Bronx adjacent
to the old churchyard, just a green field. That practice changed and
some of the graveyards have had markers after agreements were arrived
at, though I'm not to sure if English Quakers did or not.

Interestingly, my friend told me that without the WPA Writers during
the Depression, much about religion in New York City would not be
known, that is unrecorded and perhaps today we might be in the dark
about some of it she thought. We were researching Methodism and
Quakerism for former cemeteries near the two Marble Cemeteries which
are the first secular cemeteries in Manhattan still there on 2nd
street and 6th street, the former where President Monroe was once
buried before taken to Hollywood Cemetery in Virginia. Across the
street on 2nd was a courthouse, which when being built found that not
all of the Methodists burials had been moved in the mid-19th century,
and a special order in the New York Legislature, in the 1890's was
drawn up authorizing the Dept. of Education to remove them. The
records of that Legislature unfortunately burned in Albany, NY a few
years later. One of the first Mayanist scholars is buried in it, and
the courthouse is the Anthology Film Archives today, supported by many
in the media.

George Myers