gwmain March 23: Richard Anthony Proctor was born in England on this date in 1837. He became an accountant but then pursued his true love, astronomy, lecturing on it throughout the world. His gravestone at Green-Wood bears two stars.
March 22: Actress Maggie Mitchell, who had been rumored to be a girlfriend of Lincoln-assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose photograph was found in Booth’s wallet as he lay dying, died on this day in 1919.
March 21: Civil War officer Richard Auchmuty, who was brevetted colonel for gallantry at Gettysburg and who partnered with James Renwick Jr. as an architect, buried his amputated leg at Green-Wood on this date in 1893; he joined his leg at Green-Wood on November 3 of that year.
March 20: William Wall, who went from rope-maker to bank president (of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank) to congressman, was born in this date in 1800.
March 19: Civil War General Francis Baretto Spinola was born on this date in 1821. In 1886, he became the first Italian-American elected to Congress.
March 18: Henry Brockholst Livingston, Revolutionary War officer and Supreme Court Justice, died on this date in 1823.
March 17: On this date in 1848 the speedy clipper ship Rainbow set sail, captained by William Hayes on what he planned to be his last voyage before his retirement, bound for Valparaiso and China. The ship, captain, and crew were never seen or heard from again. Hayes’s cenotaph is at Green-Wood.
March 16: Charlotte Denman Lozier, physician and professor at the New York Medical College for Women, who campaigned for the right of women to vote, was born on this date in 1844.
March 15
On this date in 1921, Catherine Weldon, advocate for American Indian rights, who befriended Chief Sitting Bull and became his confidante and private secretary, died.
March 14: On this date in 1870, Alfred Van Derwerken was born; he died in 1906 and this monument was placed in his memory.