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August 9: New York City’s mayor, William Gaynor, was severely wounded in an assassination attempt on this date in 1910.

August 8: Henry E. Pierrepont, founder of Green-Wood Cemetery, was born on this date in 1808.

August 7: Robert B. Roosevelt, uncle of President Theodore Roosevelt, was born on this date in 1829. He lived with one family next store to where TR grew up, and also with another family a few blocks away.

August 5: On this date in 1853, Asa Holden, “the last soldier of the Revolution in this City,” was interred.

August 4: Jane Griffith died of a heart attack on this date in 1857. Her husband then commissioned a spectacular marble monument in her memory from sculptor Patrizio Piatti, who lies in an unmarked grave.

August 3: Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish patriot and Civil War general, was born on this date in 1823; he disappeared on the Missouri River in Montana in 1871, and a cenotaph to him was placed next to his widow’s grave at Green-Wood several years ago.

August 2: John P. Erickson, who as captain of the forecastle (living quarters) of the USS Pontoosuc, was awarded a Medal of Honor for his skill, gallantry and coolness while under enemy fire during the assault upon and capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington, North Carolina, during the Civil War, died on this date in 1907.

August 1: On this date in 1896, Frank Samuelson and George Harbo arrived in England after rowing across the Atlantic in an 18-foot rowboat.

July 31: Poet Phoebe Cary died on this date in 1871, just five months after the death of her sister Alice, also a poet, whom she had tried to nurse back to health.