Location: Block formed by Hunts Point Avenue, Drake Park South, Longfellow Avenue and Oak Point Avenue, Block: 2772, Lot: 170. Fenced graveyard is within the 2.49 acres of Joseph Rodman Drake Park.
Status: Never landmarked or heard.
Description from the Bronx Survey:
Set apart from the commercial bustle of the nearby Hunts Point market is quiet Drake Park, a 2½-acre tract located off Hunts Points Avenue at the junction of Longfellow, East Bay and Oak Point Avenues, The park, named for Joseph Rodman Drake, a colonial American poet who celebrated the Bronx in verse, contains the tiny eighteenth-century cemetery associated with the Hunt family.
Joseph Rodman Drake was born in New York City in 1795. He was a descendent of the colonial Drake family who settled Eastchester and whose ancestry can be traced to Sir Francis Drake. At his death in 1820 Drake was buried in the private burial ground of his cousins, the Hunt family. The earliest tombstone in the cemetery is that of Elizabeth Hunt, dated 1729.
A marble shaft erected in 1891 marks Drake’s grave. Streets nearby the park, which became city property in 1909, are named for poets Halleck, Drake, Whittier, Longfellow, and Bryant. Another nearby thoroughfare is Lafayette Avenue, named in honor of General Lafayette who visited Drake’s grave in 1824.
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