Tragedy of 1837 to be remembered in Lynbrook

Ceremony for victims of the Bristol and the Mexico shipwrecks set for Oct. 28

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Back in 1837, there were only about 100 houses in all of Near Rockaway — the colonial name for Lynbrook and Rockville Centre. The people of the neighborhood were joined by 300 wagonloads of visitors who arrived to pay their last respects to 139 strangers being buried in a mass grave, the result of two of the worst tragedies in the history of Long Island.
These were the unclaimed bodies of the victims of two shipwrecks just a few hundred feet off the South Shore, at Long Beach and Rockaway Beach. Most of the victims were Irish immigrants, who drowned or froze to death within a few hundred yards of the land of their dreams. The total death toll was 215. A monument was erected over the grave, in part using money taken from the victims’ clothing. That obelisk still stands in the Rockville Cemetery in Lynbrook.
More than 150 years passed before any serious recognition was paid to that awful tragedy, even though poet Walt Whitman had mentioned the wrecks in “Leaves of Grass.” Recently, however, things changed, thanks to the work of the Historical Society of Lynbrook and East Rockaway, the Nassau County Ancient Order of Hibernians and Lynbrook Historian Art Mattson, who wrote a book, “Water and Ice: The Wrecks of the Bristol and the Mexico on the South Shore of Long Island.” For a decade now, an annual ceremony has been held at the cemetery. The monument was also added to the United States Register of Historic Places.
This year’s ceremony will be held on Sat. Oct. 28 at 11 a.m., at the Bristol and Mexico Monument in the Rockville Cemetery, 45 Merrick Road, Lynbrook. The organizers hope once again to have pipers and a color guard. In addition, two new granite benches will be installed, and there will be a reading of the names of those who perished.

Art Mattson is an author and the village historian for Lynbrook.