The Maple Grove Cemetery Association was organized in February 1875 by a group of Brooklyn businessmen. With bylaws in place, William Cogswell was elected President in April. He was to hold that position for 60 years. That same month, the Queens County Supervisors approved purchase of land for the purpose of a rural cemetery. The parcel of land that became Maple Grove cemetery was a wooded section north of Richmond Hill in an area known as Haystown (named after Ambrose Hays who had a store on Metropolitan Avenue near 130th Street). The land belonged to Mary A. Webb, who signed a land conveyance agreement with Maple Grove in November 1875. Mr. Noyes F. Palmer was hired to act as Superintendent and construction moved very rapidly, with the result that a small number of interments had occurred by the end of 1876.
"Richmond Hill Historical Society"
The Maple Grove railway station near the cemetery was completed in 1880 and brought a steady increase in the number of people from Manhattan and Long Island who came to visit and bury their deceased. At the end of 1880, Lefferts Avenue was opened to the public from Maple Grove Station to Metropolitan Avenue (Williamsburg Road), thus creating a new route from Brooklyn and the lower East River ferries.
With changes in railroad ownership, the Maple Grove station was rather quickly abandoned, but in 1881-82, the cemetery provided transportation to and from Richmond Hill Station. In May 1883 the Long Island Railroad resumed service at Maple Grove station once a day each way. The cemetery recognized the importance of this connection and made ongoing improvements between the West entrance and the station. During the next decades, the development of Maple Grove Cemetery had an important impact on the life of both the Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens communities. A number of “notables” from these communities were buried at Maple Grove in this period.
By the early twentieth century, Adolph Strauch of Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio had initiated the “landscape lawn cemetery” concept. Stauch envisioned the cemetery as a unified, picturesque landscape with limited monuments and sculptures and low headstones. This idea evolved into what was known as a “memorial park” where monuments were unobtrusive. By 1936, sixty years after Maple Grove Cemetery was established, this concept had caught on and became a part of Maple Grove’s design. In 1943, Maple Grove became a combined traditional monumental and modern Memorial Park. Today, traditional headstones grace the monumental area and bronze memorial plaques are set flush with the ground in the Memorial Park.
Today, growth and change continue. Cremation and the above ground entombment concept have proven to be popular and “Community Mausoleums” (buildings containing multiple crypts that may be sold to various purchasers) have begun to appear in our cemetery. In keeping with the times, Maple Grove now offers all the basic types of memorialization: Graves/Plots/ lots, Mausoleum Crypt Spaces in a Community Mausoleum, Niches and Urn garden for Cremated Remains.