A large Celtic cross, carved from stone quarried at Skibo, his beloved summer home in Scotland, the country where he was born, stands in the center of a grove of rhododendron and pine trees, marking the tranquil resting place of Andrew Carnegie and his wife Louise. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in North Tarrytown, New York, a place of myths and stories, reveals little about the poor immigrant who lived to be the richest man in the world. Understated grave markers for the Carnegies simply tell of their birth and death. Loyal servants who worked for the two are interred just a few dozen feet away. Carnegie chose to be buried in America because this was the country that gave him the opportunity to become wealthy and successful; he bought a plot at Sleepy Hollow (and had it landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted), because it was where other prominent New Yorkers like the Vanderbilts and Millers built resting places for their families and monuments to their history.

Recently, Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and a small delegation of staff members visited the cemetery in the company of a Carnegie relative. At the Carnegie site, they found the grave itself hidden by trees and overgrown bushes—it seemed a place nearly forgotten. Carnegie’s last grandchild, Barbara Miller Lawson, who died this past spring, had asked the Corporation to investigate the condition of the grave, concerned that the perpetual care fund established by Carnegie in his will might no longer be adequate for dignified maintenance. The Corporation intends to ensure our founder’s dignity and will mark the site with a plaque commemorating the 21 different organizations and institutions that Carnegie established in his lifetime—a legacy that lives after him as a true and lasting tribute to the ideas, commitments and passions of one of America’s first philanthropists.

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