History of the North Graveyard
number one through five were reserved to Brickell
himself and were in total length "55 1/2 feet, more or less."
There are several problems with this plat.
First of all, the 255 feet described would not reach from the corner of
the old graveyard to High street, which was a distance of 486 feet;
secondly, the twelve, fifteen-foot lots plus 55 feet, more or less, would
total about 235 feet, not 255; third, the reservation in the deed to
Goodale mentions a strip only 192 feet in length. Finally, the plat does
not make clear just where in the strip the series of lots began or ended.
The questions raised by these descriptions are cleared up only by the
record of condemnation of the property by the city for the widening of
Spruce street in 1889. In that record it becomes apparent that the
Brickell reserve was in fact only forty feet long (not 55 feet as platted
and not 75 feet as implied by the total length of 255 feet) and that the
plat ran eastward a total of 220 feet from the northwest corner of the old
graveyard.20 This is the plat shown on the
accompanying map.
One hint as to the reason for the
discrepencies in the length of the Brickell addition is given in the
minutes of the City Council: on December 9, 1844, it was moved that "Mr.
McCoy be appointed a committee to move the west fence of the North
Graveyard to the line which Dr. L. Goodale claims to be original Line"...
The motion was defeated nine to one.21
This indicates that the western fence of the graveyard may have been too
far west when Mr. Graham made the survey of the Brickell addition, with
the result that the western end of the addition was lost when the line was
corrected at some later date.
Including the Brickell addition and
assuming that the fence extended fifteen feet onto Lincoln Goodale's land
on the west, the graveyard fence enclosed a total of 8.87 acres, more or
less.
Twelve of the Brickell lots were sold in
1845, before the tract was surveyed, for ten dollars each. Unlike the
city's lots in the Doherty tract, which were sold only "for a burying
place," the Brickell lots were sold outright. Deeds were written for the
lots, some of which were taken to the courthouse by the purchasers to be
recorded; the names of the purchasers of the other lots were recorded when
the plat was made. The purchasers and the dates on which deeds were
written, if recorded, were:
Lot 6 Emanuel & David Doherty
7 Frederick Constans
8 Ebenezer McDaniel, October 21, 1845
9 Nicholas Maurer, October 10, 1845
10 Effa Barth, October 10, 1845
11 Jacob Mourer, October 10, 1845
12 John Huffman
13 Frederick Bennignus, October 10, 1845
15
|