It subsequently came to be the final resting place of many early Near Rockaway settlers.

The cemetery features a monument to two nearby shipwrecks, the Bristol and the Mexico, in the winter of 1836–1837.

The Bristol and Mexico Monument marks the mass grave of the 139 passengers, mostly Irish immigrants fleeing famine.

[2] In 1953, a 20-year-old Ruth Bader wrote an article in New York Folklore Quarterly[3] about the memorial.

She also included a brief history of the ships' voyages from Liverpool in October 1836, and their losses off of Long Island in late November 1836 and early January 1837.