Buried: Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery, Kinderhook, New York
Eighth President - 1837-1841
Born: December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York
Died: 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862, in Kinderhook, New York
Age at death: 79
Cause of death: Heart failure
Final words: “There is but one reliance.”
Admission to Kinderhook Reformed
Cemetery: Free
One of the most comical and biting assessments of our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, came from Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett. The plain-spoken frontiersman was not impressed when he encountered “what the English call a dandy.” Crockett observed that “when he enters the Senate chamber in the morning, he struts and swaggers like a crow in the gutter.” Crockett thought he saw corsets constricting Van Buren’s ample waist and stung him further: “It would be difficult to say, from his personal appearance, whether he was man or woman.” Crockett concluded that his whiskers resolved any doubt.
The dapper Van Buren was the first president born an American citizen. He served a single term before being defeated for reelection by William Henry Harrison in 1840. Retiring to his Lindenwald estate in Kinderhook, New York, near Albany, he plotted his comeback. Van Buren sought the presidency twice more, but was unsuccessful. Thereafter his withdrawal from public life was complete, save for an occasional editorial on current affairs. His personal time was spent gardening and visiting with lifelong friends.
Martin Van Buren is Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery’s best-known resident
In 1853 Van Buren traveled to Europe, hoping a warmer climate might help his chronic asthma. He stayed there until the summer of 1855, but his respiratory problems resurfaced when he returned. Back in New York, he also suffered a series of falls, including one in which he broke his left arm and another in which he was thrown from a horse. Van Buren’s sense of humor remained intact. After the latter fall, he remarked, “Does not this not speak well of my skull?”
Van Buren was at work on his memoirs when he was stricken with pneumonia in the fall of 1861. He was bedridden thereafter. Martin Van Buren died of heart failure on Friday, July 24, 1862, at the age of seventy-nine, while at home with his sons. The announcement of his death was no surprise to the nation; rumors of the former president’s ill health had been circulating for the past year.
Van Buren’s funeral was held the following Monday at the Reformed Dutch Church of Kinderhook. Parishioners there remembered Van Buren for his loud singing voice—he frequently drowned out the hymns of those around him. Hundreds of mourners who could not fit into the church waited outside until it was time for the public viewing. Witnesses noted that the former president, well-dressed as always, looked quite natural in his rosewood coffin. As he had instructed, no bells were rung as Kinderhook’s Fire Company No. 2 led the cortege to Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery. Martin Van Buren was laid to rest alongside his beloved wife Hannah.
Touring Martin Van Buren’s Tomb at Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery
Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery is open year-round from 9:00 a.m. until dusk. Admission is free.
From the east: Take Interstate 90 to exit B1 onto U.S. Route 9 South. At the stop light on Route 9, turn onto Albany Avenue. The cemetery is located 0.5 miles ahead on both sides of Albany Avenue.
From the west: Take Interstate 90 to exit 12 onto U.S. Route 9 South. At the stop light on Route 9, turn onto Albany Avenue. The cemetery is located 0.5 miles ahead on both sides of Albany Avenue.
Van Buren’s grave is located in the northeastern section of the cemetery on the right side of Albany Avenue, the cemetery’s only road.
For additional information
Columbia County
Department of Tourism
401 State Street
Hudson, NY 12534
Phone: (800) 724-1846 /
(518) 828-3375
www.columbiacountyny.org
Martin Van Buren National
Historic Site
1013 Old Post Road
Kinderhook, NY 12106
Phone: (518) 758-9689
www.nps.gov/mava
Kinderhook Reformed Chuch
23 Broad Street
Kinderhook, NY 12106
Phone: (518) 758-6401
Martin Van Buren’s monument towers over the other graves in Kinderhook Reformed Cemeter
“Van Buren’s final hours played out against the much greater drama of the Fraternal War...”
—Richard Norton Smith
The so-called Red Fox of Kinderhook is remembered today as a political tactician of impressive gifts and flexible principles. After defending slavery while in the White House, in 1848 he reinvented himself as the standard bearer of the Free Soil Party. A natural-born conciliator, Van Buren nevertheless rejected an appeal from Franklin Pierce that would have enlisted America’s ex-presidents in calling a Peace Convention on the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration.
Van Buren’s final hours played out against the much greater drama of the Fraternal War; as his life drew to its close, the man in the White House sought advice from his Cabinet about the timing of a presidential proclamation to emancipate slaves in areas still in rebellion against the United States government.
On learning of his predecessor’s death, Lincoln took time out from his crushing responsibilities to draft a statement of tribute. “The grief of his patriotic friends,” wrote the man in the White House, “will measurably be assuaged by the consciousness that while suffering with disease and seeing his end approaching, his prayers were for the restoration of the authority of the government of which he had been head, and for peace and good will among his fellow citizens.”
Lincoln, facing hotly contested midterm elections, was not above putting words of endorsement in a dead man’s mouth. The president once known as the Little Magician would have approved.
—RNS