Three orphan girls drowned in a pond at St. Agnes Cemetery in 1903 and were buried in pauper's graves. Now, 107 years later, they have a monument thanks to an anonymous donor. (Paul Grondahl/Times Union)

Media: Times Union


Over the course of a century, silver maple trees grew to a height of more than 70 feet and dappled a gently sloping lawn in Section 32 of St. Agnes Cemetery with a spreading blanket of restorative shade.

For all those decades, nothing marked the open ground beneath the trees where three orphans who drowned in a pond on the property were buried in a pauper's grave.

Now, 107 years later, they have been commemorated by a large granite marker as a gift from an anonymous donor.

The front of the monument bears the names and ages of the three who died on Sept. 5, 1903: Mary Breen, 16; Grace Burns, 19; and Mary O'Brien, 20.

The back of the stone has a quotation from the eulogy a priest delivered at their funeral: "God transplanted the sweet buds of their souls in paradise to bloom for an eternity."

The cemetery's historian, Kelly Grimaldi, who researched the story and brought it to light, stood alone in windswept Lot 47 on a recent afternoon. She searched out the spot where the pond that claimed the young women's lives was long ago filled in and reclaimed for burials. She spoke softly to the drowning victims, who she dreamed about and took to calling "my orphans."

"I told them they were finally getting a monument and a very peaceful feeling came over me as I stood out there," Grimaldi said. She and other cemetery volunteers admit they often talk to the dead as they repair and clean markers.

Week after week, as she worked her way through the large, ornate monuments of Albany's wealthy, Grimaldi was nagged by inequities of class -- even in death.

"The captains of industry got their giant markers and then there were the three orphan girls who had no marker, and yet they died right here in the cemetery," she said.

Grimaldi began piecing together the long-forgotten details of the tragedy and shared the tale. Someone heard about it and paid the $1,500 cost of carving a marker to Empire Monument Co., which discounted its usual fee.

"Nobody knows who the donor is," Grimaldi said. "Of course, I'm curious. But I can understand if they don't want to give their name. I just appreciate what they've done."

"I have absolutely no idea who it is, but it makes for a wonderful ending to the story," said John Diefenderfer, archivist at the Daughters of Charity's DePaul Provincial House in Menands, near the cemetery.

The Daughters of Charity, who ran the former St. Joseph's Industrial School, an orphanage and technical training program on North Pearl Street in Albany, often brought the orphans on picnics to the cemetery, which was a popular setting for recreation and leisure in the Victorian era.

On Sept. 5, 1903, a warm late summer day, the nuns brought 14 orphans to a pond on the edge of the cemetery in front of a Victorian mansion on the Fernwood estate. It was owned by industrialist and banker William Howard Hart, who later donated the property to St. Agnes Cemetery.

What began as a lighthearted frolic for the orphans, including a quartet who floated to the deep end of the pond on a makeshift raft, ended in a tragic tableau of "bowed heads and sorrowing hearts," according to a 1903 account in the Times Union.

As the drowning orphans thrashed and screamed, the nuns, dressed in their full-length heavy black habits and winged coronets on their heads, "fell to their knees and prayed and urged some one to save the girls," the article said.

Four cemetery workers heard the wails and ran to the pond, but none of them knew how to swim.

The fourth girl, Eva Layton, 16, who managed to hold onto the overturned raft, was eventually pulled out and resuscitated. She was the sole survivor. The bodies of Breen, Burns and O'Brien were later recovered from the deepest part of the pond, which was 17 feet deep.

There were no known family members to handle funeral arrangements. "The girls were practically alone in the world," the newspaper noted.

Grimaldi has tried to track down any living relatives, without success. Layton, the survivor, ended up in the orphanage when her father died of tuberculosis in 1896 at age 50. Layton's mother was committed to the Poughkeepsie Insane Asylum after her third daughter was born while the woman was still in her early 20s.

On Sept. 8, 1903, more than 1,000 people lined the funeral route as three white hearses carried three white caskets. "Sobs could be heard in every part of the neighborhood," the newspaper said.

Grimaldi is planning a monument consecration ceremony on the 107th anniversary of the orphans' burial on Sept. 8. She expects a small gathering under the shade of the silver maples.

"I'm just glad they finally have their monument," she said. "I've come to feel so connected to them."
