Barkaloo Cemetery, 1966.

The Barkaloo Cemetery is Brooklyn's smallest burial ground. The Barkaloo family were early Dutch settlers of the area and established their private graveyard in 1725. According to a marker (placed in the mid 20th century), the land is the final resting place of at least 21 people, including Revolutionary War soldiers Simon Cortelyou and Harmans Barkaloo. Its most recent burial dates to 1848!

Helpfully perhaps, the tiny graveyard seemed to be mostly forgotten for decades around the turn of the 20th century. While Bay Ridge grew around it, the plot remained, though losing headstones to theft and deterioration. It was surveyed in 1916, and a 1923 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted its shrinkage: "As the years went by…it grew smaller. By dead of night sometimes, sometimes by noonday’s glare, laborers came and emptied the graves of their ashes and then closed in the plot by making its circumferential fence a bit smaller."

In 1923 the Daughters of the American Revolution got involved, cleaning out the plot and placing markers for the two Revolutionary War veterans. (Research suggests that the DAR actually re-creating the graveyard on nearby available space, not necessarily the historical outline of the plot.)

Today the small plot remains well kept behind an iron fence, tucked up to the back side of the large Xaverian High School.