An Act to Incorporate the New York Marble Cemetery
Passed February 4, 1831
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
§1 All such persons as now are, or hereafter shall become, Owners and Proprietors of Vaults in the cemetery recently constructed in the interior of the block formed by the Bowery, the Second Avenue, and Second and Third Streets, in the Eleventh Ward of the City of New York, shall be, and hereby are, created a body corporate and politic, in fact and in name, by the name and style of “The New York Marble Cemetery,” and by that name they and their successors shall and may be known, and have perpetual succession.
§2The said Cemetery and the several Vaults therein shall, and may at all times hereafter, be used and appropriated for the interment of the dead, and for no other use or purpose whatever. The said Vaults shall be deemed personal property, and shall not, in case where not more than one of them is owned by the same person or persons, be liable to taxation, or sale on execution, or to be inventoried as Assets applicable to the payments of debts. But every of the said Vaults may be bequeathed by Last Will and Testament; and in case of intestacy, shall belong to the next of kin of the deceased; and no dead body shall be interred in any of the said Vaults, except with the previous permission of the Owner or Owners thereof. But nothing in this Act contained, shall prevent the Corporation of the City of New York from enacting Laws and Ordinances for regulating or preventing the interment of the dead within said City, including the above-described Cemetery.
§3 The affairs and concerns of the said Corporation shall be managed, regulated, and conducted by five Trustees; each of whom shall be an owner of one of the said Vaults, and shall be chosen by ballot, on the first Monday of May in each year, by the owners of the said Vaults; and that at every such election, each of the said Vaults shall entitle the owner or owners thereof to one vote; and the five persons having the highest number of votes at any such Election, shall be declared duly elected Trustees for the next ensuing year, and until others shall be duly chosen in their places. And the five first Trustees shall be John Hone, Benjamin Strong, Robert Center, Benjamin L. Swan, and Nathaniel Richards, who shall hold their offices until the first Monday of May in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and until others shall be duly chosen in their places.
§4 The said trustees shall have power, and are hereby authorized, to raise by Assessment upon the owners of the said Vaults respectively, such sums of money as shall be deemed necessary or proper to defray any and all expenses in and about the said Cemetery; but the repairs of the said Vaults respectively shall be made at the proper costs and charges of the Owners thereof respectively, and pursuant to the order therefor, and according to the regulations of the said Trustees.
§5 Nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to impair or affect any previously vested right, lien, or incumbrance by mortgage, judgment, or otherwise, in favor of any third person or persons to, in, or upon the Lands, or Real Estates, or any part thereof, whereon the said Cemetery is constructed, but every such right, lien, and incumbrance shall remain unimpaired, and be of the same validity and effect as if this Act had not been passed.
§6 The said Corporation shall possess the general powers, and be subject to the liabilities and provisions contained in Title Third of Chapter Eighteenth of the First Part of the Revised Statutes.
§7 The Act shall take effect from and immediately after the passage thereof.