Workmen Speed Big Task of Evacuating Cemetery
From "Rochester Democrat & Chronicle"
Sept. 2, 1935

A quarter completed is the big task of evacuating old St. Patrick's Cemetery on Pinnacle Hill. [Above], Patrick W. Bell, former caretaker who is aiding in locating the old graves, stands at entrance to winter vault. [Below], Steam-shovel at work stripping away a layer of top soil before the graves are more reverently opened.

Graves of Pioneers Moved To Holy Sepulchre Plots

Pinnacle Cemetery, burying plot of many of the city's pioneer Catholic residents, yields at last to the exigencies of 1935. More than 1,000 of the 4,000 graves in the plot have already been removed to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

Due to vandalism and lack of funds in St. Patrick's Church Society to provide for cemetery's maintenance, the graves are being removed to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. The work now in progress is under direction of Frank Taylor, superintendent of Holy Sepulchre, and Patrick W. Bell caretakar of the cemetery 40 years ago.

Mr. Bell does not remember exactly the founding of the cemetery in the year 1840 but he had a youthful acquaintence with many men who did. He recalls also that the old road leading in from Feild Street was known as Paddy's Lane and that the gates which stood at the southwest corner of the plot opening on Clinton Avenue South were formally dedicated on Rochester's first Decoration Day, May 31, 1868.

He is not sure about the speakers but he has been told that the platforms stood on the hill near the graves of the late Grand Army Colonels O'Rorke and Ryan. The procession of patriots who decorated the graves that first Decoration Day moved from Mt. Hope Cemetery over Highland Avenue to Pinnacle.

Pinnacle was used as a cemetery between 1840 and 1872. When Holy Sepulchre was opened in 1872 many Catholic families in the city purchased lots and burials were thereafter made in Holy Sepulchre. Pinnacle was used occasionally for some years however, the last burial there being in 1900.

The Pinnacle location was far from the city's life in the fifties and sixties when it was used generally. There were one or two houses in what is now Field Street. Funeral services conducted in parish churches and then the mourners in hacks followed the hearse out Monroe Avenue to the present subway bridge, at time a tall canal bridge.

From the bridge to the cemetery, the bier was carried on the shoulders of the mourners, such was the condition of the roads.

Because of the severity of the winters no burials were made between November and May 1, the caskets being placed in the vault. This vault built nearly a hundred years ago, still stands.

Plates Give Clues

Rt. Rev. Msgr. Charles F. Shay, pastor of St. Patrick's Cathedral and treasurer of St. Patrick's Church Society said identification has been made of 35% of the graves to date, largely through the discovery of the lead name plates on the caskets.

Most of those identified were young persons, victims of the city's numerous epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and malaria. Pioneers who were interred in the Pinnacle plot include Captain Sullivan, Grand Army officer and active 1eader in the old Corn Hill parish of Immaculate Conception Church; Daniel Barry, grandfather of William C. Barry; James Cunningham, relative of Augustine and Francis E. Cunningham; James Cortland, formerly employed in the County Clerk's office; Charles McAnally; Dr. Hugh Bradley, relative of Dr. George G. Carroll and James Buchanan. The priests' and sisters' plot originally located at Pinnacle has long since been removed to Holy Sepulchre.

First superintendent of the cemetery, according to Chancery records was Thomas McFadden. The list of his successors like the names on the tombstones reads like the record of Irish pioneers, Michael Sheely, Patrick Bell, Patrick W. Bell and Daniel Shole

What disposition will be made of the Pinnacle property Monsignor Shay could not say yesterday.