Who, Exactly, Is Buried at Quarry Hill Cemetery?

This may or may not be a mystery to the rest of Rochester, but it is to me.

My husband and I took advantage of the nice weather we had here on Sunday, and decided to hike through Quarry Hill Nature Center. Not too far into our walk, we noticed the cemetery... and being newer residents to Rochester, we were definitely curious about who occupied it!

Given that it was Memorial Day Weekend, we were also curious about something else. Why did some of these tombstones have American flags placed at them, and some didn't?

Quarry Hill was awesome enough to answer both of these questions, for anyone else wondering the same things.

They explain, "The Quarry Hill Cemetery is the burial place for 2,019 residents of the Rochester State Hospital laid to rest between 1886 and 1965 in unmarked graves or graves only indicated by numbers stamped into concrete markers molded from coffee cans. After the hospital closure in 1982, a portion of the state hospital land was acquired by the city of Rochester and is now Quarry Hill Park and Nature Center. In 1999, a database was created from hospital cemetery ledgers, listing burial dates and plot locations of the RSH patients buried within the cemetery. A group called the Rochester State Hospital Cemetery Recognition Group was formed and recently, this group completed the project to mark all the graves in the cemetery as you see them today."

As for the flags, they say, "I can't comment on why the flags are there other than to say that they may have been placed by family members still living in the community." We were thinking that may have been the case.

Either way, we really enjoyed our hike! I'm just glad to see that someone, whoever it was, took the time to honor the fallen at this Rochester gem.