Leave No Veteran
Unremembered
Groveville Methodist Church Cemetery

     In July of 2016 our Post was contacted by a local resident, Robert Burke,
    who had discovered an abandoned cemetery along Croton Avenue in
    Cortlandt Manor.  In his research he found that this long abandoned
    cemetery was the Groveville Methodist Church Cemetery.  The cemetery,
    also known as 'Ackerman' or Dixie cemetery, was abandoned when the
    New Croton Dam flooded the residents out of the area and forced the
    church to close.  Bob contacted our Post for help in clearing the 70+ years of
    overgrowth and neglect from the grounds to restore it to a respectable final
    resting place for the 30 or so graves there, 9 of whom contain Civil War
    veterans.
    Bob organized clean-ups once a month at the cemetery to clear out all the
    fallen trees and to cut down 20 trees and brush that have grown since the
    cemetery was abandoned.  All this had to be carried out to the road where
    the Town of Cortlandt helped with taking it away.  As you can see below
    all this back-breaking work did a great job of exposing these long hidden
    graves.  Planning is now underway to install a paved plaza entrance to the
    cemetery and install signage to identify it more easily from the road.  When
    the weather improves in the Spring we will return to stand up the fallen
    headstones and if possible straighten those that have tilted.
    If you wish to help with the restoration please check out Bob's Facebook
    page "Leave No Veterans Unremembered' to sign up for scheduled clean-up
    day notifications.  If you wish to make a donation to help pay for the
    improvements there you can send it payable to Yorktown American Legion
    Post #1009 marked for 'Leave No Veteran Unremembered' (LNVU).
    Lastly, if anyone knows of a Cub Scout or Boy Scout unit near the cemetery
    who would like to 'adopt' the cemetery for community service project after
    or during the restoration please have them contact either Bob or our Post.  
    Our Post would provide US flags every Memorial Day to decorate the
    veterans graves there if the Scouts could install them and pick up any fallen
    branches and such.
In photo above 2 headstones are barely visible in the center near the top.


Below - the same two headstones are to the right of the tree in the center but now three
more headstones behind that tree and two more at the far right can also be seen now.
Below - the same two headstones are to the far left and now seven more headstones are
spread across the treeline visible for the first time in decades.
Above - if you look real hard you can see one headstone barely above the 'vee' of the dark
vine in the center
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