The Cemetery Today
Youngs Memorial Cemetery looks much as it did in Theodore Roosevelt’s day, and it is open to visitors year-round. As you enter the cemetery’s gates and climb the steep path, you’ll pass the graves of the Youngs family and their neighbors through the centuries—farmers, fishermen, doctors, inventors, merchants and veterans of almost every American war. Near the top you’ll come to the 26 steps leading to T.R.s gravesite; if you’ve done your homework you can call out the names of the nation’s first 26 presidents as you make the final ascent.
Behind the gravesite stand thick woods. T.R. once told a close cousin, W. Emlen Roosevelt, that those woods were home to the greatest variety of birds in Oyster Bay. Knowing that, Emlen purchased the woods after T.R. died and donated them to the National Audubon Society, which created a bird sanctuary. Then as now, The Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary was a fitting tribute to America’s Conservationist President.
Youngs Memorial Cemetery is a nonprofit organization. It receives no government funds for the upkeep of Theodore Roosevelt’s grave. Instead, the cemetery depends on income from a modest endowment and donations from the public. By giving as little as $10 today, you will be honoring the memory of Theodore Roosevelt for centuries to come. Feel free to ask us for further information.
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FURTHER READING
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, and Colonel Roosevelt,
a trilogy by Edmund Morris,
Random House
Edith Kermit Roosevelt, by Sylvia Jukes Morris,
Coward, McCann & Geohegan
Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough,
Simon & Schuster
The Alienst, by Caleb Carr,
Random House
When We Were Little, by Mary Fanny Youngs,
Google Books, free
Cove Neck, by John E. Hammond and Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
The History Press