It is related that Mr. Hall soon after repented of his bargain and offered to pay $50,000 if the block were deeded back to him. The offer was refused, but 100 feet in depth on three sides of the plot was sold to lighten the debt and the rest of the land, 413x206 feet, was devoted to cemetery purposes. Permission for the first interment was given on March 13, 1833, and from that date until the old Eleventh Street burial ground was officially closed in August, 1848, the total number of interments made in its limits was 41,016. As has been stated, the interments in St. Patrick’s graveyard, from May 25, 1813, to March, 1833, were 32,153, so that in these two old downtown graveyards in thirty-five years, a total of 73,169 Catholics were buried. These figures are taken from Archbishop Corrigan’s paper on “The Catholic Cemeteries of New York” and are therefore official. The Avenue A end of the Eleventh Street plot was originally a hollow and had to be filled in about eighteen feet above the level at the time of its purchase. There was a wooden fence around the property at first and this was replaced by the iron railing that now encloses it. The high brick wall around St. Patrick’s was put up just before the anti-Catholic excitement of 1836 and served as a protection to the old church that largely helped, when manned by stout defenders, to awe the mob that assembled to plunder and destroy it. In the same year, June 5, 1836, it was determined to rebuild St. Peter’s Church in Barclay Street. The graves in the little space about the church were opened and most of the remains reinterred in St. Patrick’s graveyard. Some of the pioneers were left undisturbed and still repose under the walls of the new church built over the old site. The dead who sleep about the walls of old St. Patrick’s made up the very flower of the pioneer families, mainly Irish, who built up the church in New York. Among the long list are the first pastors and their assistants, Fathers Michael O’Gorman, Richard Bulger, Charles Brennan and Peter Malou—who was a general in the Belgium army and then a Jesuit. One of his sons became a bishop in his native land—Fathers Luke Berry, of St. Mary’s; Gregory B. Pardow, an uncle of the Jesuit of our day; James Neale, Carberry J. Byrne, Thomas C. Levins, John N. Smith of St. James’ and Dr. John Power, V. G. The remains of the bishops of the See, except the first, were transferred from old St. Patrick’s to the crypt of the Fifth Avenue Cathedral after it was opened.