"Erected to the memory of an amiable child, St. Claire Pollock, died 15 July 1797, in the Fifth Year of his age."

It has taken some time for me to decide what the "Death" link on the main page should lead to. After all, when one is greatly interested in, or perhaps even slightly obsessed with the topic, the possibilities are endless. But going through some photos I took last summer, I found one of the grave of the amiable child, and it struck me that of all the things I might say about death here, his story might be the most meaningful.

Many New Yorkers, and history buffs, and trivia fans, and even some people who aren't any of those, could tell you who is buried in Grant's Tomb. (Hint: "Grant" is not a complete answer.) But I would wager that almost no one could tell you who is buried behind Grant's tomb. And yet, someone is, and has been commemorated there since well before Grant himself was even born. Riverside Park grows wild that far north; the orderly flower beds and promenades give way to a stretch that resembles the forest primeval. But in back of and across Riverside Drive from Grant's Tomb lies a little iron fence enclosing a stone monument and a small rose bush, a plot of land marking a promise kept, and a little boy remembered, across two centuries.

In the late 1700s, St. Claire Pollock's family owned a farm on a large plot of land up where Grant's Tomb is today. There is not much that I can say about St. Claire. He was, apparently, an amiable child, and it seems safe to say that he loved playing on his family's farm. The story goes that in 1797, he died tragically in a fall from some rocks on the land, and was buried on the farm. The other thing I can say about St. Claire is that he was well loved by his family. For when his uncle sold the land, he asked the buyers to respect and maintain the child's grave.

And, surprisingly enough in a world where such things are usually soon forgotten, St. Claire, the amiable child, was not. Through a succession of owners, down to the City Parks Department, that little plot of land has somehow emerged intact.

The monument is too well preserved to be original. My guess is it dates to sometime in the mid 1900s. I would love to know who replaced it, will update this description if I ever learn. In any case, I imagine the words on the little stone (quoted above) at least approximate the original. There are other words as well. Curiously, a quotation from Job: "Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." (Job 14:1-2). While I suppose it is apt, Job seems a little intense for the grave of a five year old. One hopes, at least, that St. Claire himself had little notion of days full of trouble or being cut down during his short lifetime.

Aside from liking the passage from Job, there is another reason to tell this story here. I worry about being forgotten when I'm gone. Fame and Infamy both seem relatively unlikely for me at this point (though I have not completely written off Infamy), and Doing Great Things is the surest path to being remembered in this world. St. Claire shows another way to be remembered: accident. In a city that routinely tears down, paves over, buries in the Meadowlands, and otherwise urban-renews its past, it is amazingly unlikely that two hundred six years later St. Claire Pollock should still have a monument, pretty much where it's always been. It is unlikelier still that there should be a handful of people like me (and now like you, too) who have a faint knowledge of who he was.

Riverside Park encompasses many memorials to the Great and the Good, including the soldiers and sailors of the Civil War, Eleanor Roosevelt, and even Joan of Arc. But St. Claire is also a part of that august company. As long as that is the case, there's at least a faint hope that some accident of fate might preserve a shadow of my memory down through time as well. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

17 February 2003