This post is published in conjunction with a recent article on Bowne Station, because in that article Mr. Bush recalled the Bosenbury family, and the trouble they had burying old Cornelius Bosenbury. In this article, Mr. Bush went looking for that cemetery.
cemeteries
The Thatcher Burying Ground
There is a tiny burying ground located on a plot of land across from the Delaware Township Municipal Building that is used during the summer by the Sergeantsville Farmers’ Market. It is hidden in a clump of trees, and very few people know of its existence.
Family Burying Grounds Matter
The following is the keynote speech I delivered on September 19, 2015 for the 2nd Annual Cemetery Seminar, sponsored by the Hunterdon Co. Historical Society and others. It is somewhat modified to make it more readable, less like a speech.
Pine Hill Cemetery, Revisited
Pine Hill Cemetery is one of the most interesting of the old family burial grounds in Hunterdon County. I have written about it before, in an article that listed the known graves with some biographical information. But I had just scratched the surface; there is so much more to be said.
Rittenhouse Cemetery, part two
This is the conclusion of my article on the Rittenhouse Cemetery overlooking Prallsville, on the border between Delaware Township and Stockton Borough. For a discussion of the earliest stone and of the history of its ownership, see Rittenhouse Cemetery, part one.
The Rittenhouse Cemetery, part one
Several years ago (in 2007), me and my cemetery buddies (pardon the grammar) visited the mysterious and lovely Rittenhouse Cemetery overlooking the old Prallsville quarry. I have wanted to write about this place for some time, but put it off because of concern that by making it known it would be more vulnerable to vandals. It appears that my restraint did not make much difference. Bob Leith visited recently and found one of the stones with graffiti and another one with a shotgun blast to its face. So, there is not much point in secrecy anymore. But there is another reason why I am inspired to write about the cemetery now. It has to do with the oldest stone there.
The Kitchen Cemetery
Also known as the Thatcher Cemetery,
but is not to be confused with the Thatcher Burying Ground in Sergeantsville.
One of the most interesting private cemeteries in Delaware Township lies hidden among the trees on an old farm located near Routes 523 and 579. In 1931, Egbert T. Bush wrote that half of the cemetery was located on the Thatcher farm and half on a farm owned by A. J. Dalrymple. Bush identified a few of the stones, and on a visit in 1995 I found a few more, for a total of 18 gravestones with initials.1
Query: Union Cemeteries
Some time ago, I received a query from Alice Groner, regarding the name Union, as applied to cemeteries. Here is what she wrote:
Why were so many cemeteries named Union Cemetery years before the Civil War? . . . I have continued my search as well and discovered that Union Twp. in Hunterdon County was named after Union Furnace which made, among other things, cannon balls for the Revolutionary War. And a lot of the Union Cemeteries in NJ were established before/long before the Civil War. The Union Cemetery, which kicked off the discussion with my friend, is located near Finesville (on the Warren County side of the Musconetcong River), and it is so old that few tombstones are readable. I’m, also, wondering if the usual rather small cemeteries of our early churches filled up and, therefore, folks decided to have a cemetery uniting those of all/most faiths.
“…so many questions…so little time.”
A Google search on the word Union in the Revolutionary War will get you some articles on the many flags that were flown during that time, one in particular (from Taunton, Massachusetts) with the words: “Liberty and Union.” So the word was on people’s minds when they thought about uniting the colonies. The goal of creating “a more perfect union” was used in the preamble to the Constitution.
Perhaps some of you can come up with a better answer for Alice. It’s an intriguing question.
The Locktown Baptist Cemetery
There has been a Baptist Church in Locktown since the early 19th century, and a cemetery associated with it. The church and the cemetery were located on land belonging to Daniel Rittenhouse, whose home was a short distance west of Locktown on the Kingwood-Locktown Road. Most of the names in this cemetery are of families that lived nearby in Kingwood and Delaware Townships, many of them descendants of original German immigrants. Many of the original stones are now missing, even ones that were inventoried in the 1940s. Old cemeteries are hard to preserve.
Hunting for a Cemetery
Three Great Hunterdon Co. Historians Try to Find the Opdycke Cemetery
Over five years ago, I published an article about the Opdycke Cemetery in the Delaware Township Post. It has now been revised as “Opdycke Cemetery Revisited.” More recently, I came across some letters exchanged by Egbert T. Bush and Hiram E. Deats regarding their attempts to find this burying ground and to identify who was buried there. These letters can be found in the Egbert T. Bush Papers at the Hunterdon County Historical Society.