Stories from Bovina's Cemeteries - Bovina's Earliest Burial

The oldest documented burial in the Town of Bovina is that of Bathsheba Brush, widow of Nehemiah Brush and mother of Bovina pioneer Alexander Brush. I have to say documented because there likely are older burials of the first European settlers in Bovina that are lost to time and nature (the earliest referenced death in the town took place in the 1790s).

We do not know that much about Bathsheba, including her maiden name. She probably was born in Huntington, Long Island in about 1723. We also do not know when she was widowed or when she came to Bovina, though it had to be 1794 or later, when her son settled in what is now Bovina Center. When she died in 1803 there was no Town of Bovina. At that time, Brush's land was in the Town of Delhi. Bovina Center did not become Brushland until several years after the death of her son in 1840. 

Bathsheba is buried in the Brush Cemetery in the Bovina Center hamlet at the corner of Maple Avenue and County Highway 6. It is one of the few headstones in Bovina made of red sandstone.