New Mount Ida Cemetery

After picking up my daughters from sleepovers and treating them to lunch at Famous Lunch on Congress Street in Troy, we decided to head over to the New Mount Ida Cemetery on Pinewoods Avenue.  In reality the cemetery is not "New."  It is simply to differentiate two cemeteries with the same name.  The "Old" Mount Ida Cemetery is located not far from the "New" at the Poestenkill where Congress Street and Pawling Avenue intersect.

This was my first jaunt to this cemetery in almost twenty years.  The cemetery was in much better condition than I had remembered it.  I recall grass that stood knee high to over two feet high.  Through the work of a few dedicated volunteers, the cemetery is being brought back to a usable and friendly status.

We stopped at Mount Ida to snap some photos of an ancestor's grave site. My gggg grandmother, Geesje Raeloss Hoorn married Klaas Booij on 28 October 1828 in Nijeveen, Holland.  They immigrated to America in the early 1840s with their children and eventually resided in Albany.  Somewhere along their journey their name changed from Booij to Boyd.  An even more dramatic change was my gggg grandmother's name change from Geesje Raeloss to Lucretia; as can be seen on her stone.

Boyd gravestone

Lucretia Boyd

While we were at Mount Ida, we met some of the people who are volunteering their time to help bring back the cemetery.  They were leveling and resetting some stones.  We chatted for about twenty minutes and they mentioned that Joe Ferrannini from Grave Stone Matters will be giving a presentation on grave stone conservation at the cemetery on Saturday 28 June 2014 at 9 AM.

In October 2013 I wrote a small piece on Joe.  He was repairing stones in the Greenbush cemetery.  It will be worthwhile to check this out.  Joe is very knowledgeable and friendly.  I will be definitely be checking this out.