Peter Debaun House, Emerson, New Jersey

The Peter DeBaun house in Emerson, on Main Street, across from the beautiful Emerson Woods, is up for sale.  

This photo from the 1960's shows the house before it was converted into an American Legion hall, but much of the original fabric of the house is still behind the bushes and under the siding.  Did I say it's on almost two acres of land?  The topography doesn't lend itself to development (it's on a knoll that has been cut away on three sides for an earlier development), but if it is developed the house will be gone.

Amy DeBaun and John Kinabrew are working to save the house.  They have an online petition to sign, they are networking with all the local people with an interest in the house and are brainstorming for a non-profit use and a sustainable "business model." 

Amy writes:  One of the oldest homes remaining in Emerson (first wing built in approximately 1770), New Jersey is for sale and threatened with demolition. ... It is a tangible link to the area’s prerevolutionary and agricultural past and was the homestead of the DeBauns (my family) for five generations.  Contact her at Amy.DeBaun@trincoll.edu

For more about the house, read John and Amy's report. 

Preservation in the News

Preservation struggles and successes take place every day in our county.  Three articles were recently in the Record.

1) A successful Eagle Scout project in the Dumont Cemetery, especially protecting a monument of an infant, less than one month old, outside the fence.  See:
Eagle Scout Project Restores Dumont Cemetery

2) The owner of a Lustron house in Closter, protesting the classification of the house as historic by the Closter Historic Preservation Commission.  Where are the lines between private property rights and the perservation of our heritage?  See:
Closter Homeowner Challenging Historic Label

3)  Environmental Preservation and Historic Preservation can often be partners.  Montvale is facing issues around the redevelopment of the DePiero farm (and farmstand).  Compromise is possible, but are the major players interested?  Lori Charkey and Mark Becker wrote an editorial with suggestions for compromises.  See:
Smaller Commericial Footprint on DePiero Farmland

Preservation of the Palisades north of Fort Lee.  The fate of the Zabriskie Schedler house in Ridgewood.  The Peter DeBaun house in Emerson (more on that soon).  The list could go on and on.   Land and ratables are so valuable that we face challenges every day to the preservation and integrity of our historic heritage and landscapes.  It's good to mark the successes and to keep the conversation going.  The first step to change is awareness.

Fieldstone Grave Markers

I posted the following information on the Dutch-Colonies rootsweb listserv in response to a post by Judy Cassidy, "Early Dutch cemeteries with fieldstone markers."  See here for the thread.   

There are fieldstones in the Reformed and old family burial grounds in Bergen County, New Jersey.  I am familiar with the ones in the Old Paramus Reformed Churchyard Cemetery (Ridgewood, NJ) 

and the Zabriskie Hopper Burial Ground (Paramus, NJ). 

 Both also have photos posted on findagrave.com.  The Zabriskie Hopper burial ground is on private property and not open to the public.  However, I have just completed a review of existing lists and photos (by Jackie Jensen and Pete Evans) and the updates have been posted on findagrave by (Rich H.).  Of the dated markers 28 (or about 1/3) are prior to 1800 and most of those are probably fieldstones.  There are extant photos of seven fieldstones.  One, that of James A. Bogart (1785) is shaped:

 

Photo:  Jackie Jensen

The rest appear to be their natural shapes.  There are no long, narrow post shapes as at Dorland Cemetery, Montgomery Township, NJ or Magagkamack Cemetery in Orange County, NY.  The fieldstones, especially some of those at the Paramus Churchyard cemetery seem to be broken, but looking at the placement of the writing reveals that, in many cases, this is their natural shape and size. 

There is an excellent article, "New Netherland's Gravestone Legacy" by Brandon Richards in Markers, 1997, v. XXIV, p. 24.  (It can be viewed or downloaded from University of Massachusetts Amherst Special Collections.) In it he describes the early post-type markers noted by Judy in the Dorland Cemetery and the pointed and natural fieldstones in the other cemeteries.  In Ackerman and Goff's transcription of the Zabriskie Hopper Cemetery in 1946 he mentions that there are "numerous fieldstones without marks."  Many of the earliest markers were probably used to indicate sites of burials (so as not to re-use them) and for a generation, or so, people knew who was buried where.  Eventually, marking with initials and dates became a practical necessity.  The markings are described as "non-artisanal" by Richards; that is, they were made by an untrained or inexperienced hand.  The lettering ranges from very crude scratching to beautiful, well-laid-out lettering.  In the Paramus Churchyard there is at least one fieldstone in Dutch. 

(To display the fieldstones in the ZH Cemetery:  At findagrave.com, search by "Cemetery" for Zabriskie.  Select filter "Names with grave photo."  Fieldstones are James A. Bogart 1785, ASH 1777, AAM 1774, WAW 1796, AZ 1781, and HZ MZ 1786.)  

The next issue of In Bergen's Attic (Bergen County Historical Society), will have an article on the Zabriskie Hopper Burial Ground.

Photos are mine, unless otherwise noted.

Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans

In every burying ground and cemetery, there are hidden people, ones for whom there are no  markers or whose wooden (or other) markers have long-ago disappeared.  These graves are those of the poor, the lonely, and disdained.  There are even entire burying grounds without any remaining markers.  Some of these unmarked graves and cemeteries mark the final resting place of enslaved African Americans. Not all of them are unmarked and not all of them are unknown.

The Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans is seeking to document those cemeteries which have the remains of those who lived in slavery in the United States.

The mission of the Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans is to identify, document and memorialize burial sites of the enslaved, most of which are abandoned or undocumented.  Operating from the premise that all burial sites are sacred, we seek to identify these grounds by creating a database for their documentation regardless of their current condition - survived and protected or neglected and deserted.

The form for submitting a site is easy to fill out.  I submitted Gethsemane Cemetery in Little Ferry, because of the one known burial of a previously enslaved woman,

Elizabeth Dickerson Campbell Sutliff Dulfer (ca. 1790-1880).  She was manumitted in 1822 and after 1840 began buying clay-rich property and selling the clay to the brick and pottery industries.  There is an excellent guide to the cemetery--Gethsemane Cemetery: Guide to the Gravemarkers and their Inscriptions.  The names of the people buried there are from markers and from funeral home records.  Out of over 500 burials, only 27 markers with inscriptions survived.

I learned about Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans from  "Burial Sites Of Slaves, Marked On the Web," by Sarah Maslin Nir. New York Times, March 19, 2013. 

 

Cemeteries as Destinations

An article on March 21 in The New York Times by Jane L. Levere, "Art and History Among the Dead," is an interesting insight into 1) the artistic value of the sculpture in cemeteries, and 2) the ways in which cemeteries can capitalize on their visual resources.  Many cemeteries do not have the economic resources for ongoing maintenance.    However, cemeteries are outdoor museums, as we genealogists already appreciate, and educational and nature programming can take advantage of that and raise money for ongoing support as well. 

Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx has a number of events sponsored by the Woodlawn Conservance:  Art, Architecture, History, Landscape, Nature tours by trolley or walking.  They even offer concerts!  Although many very wealthy people are buried there, there are also "regular" people.  Joe and I visited there last year and saw many interesting monuments and mausoleums as well as the beautifully landscaped grounds.  Their photo policy prevents me from posting any photos.

Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, in Brooklyn, also has a full schedule of activities.  You can conduct a burial search online--by name and date only.  There is a free form to fill out to find out what records they have on a particular burial.  Once the records are identified there is a $28 per 1/2 hour research fee to have them duplicated and sent to you.  As expensive as that is, remember that your dollars go to support the maintenance of the cemetery as a place of enjoyment and research (at a price).  Their photography policy again prevents me from posting any photos.

Quoted in the New York Times article, Joseph P. Dispenza of the Forest Lawn cemetery in Buffalo, said, "Surrounding the dead with the living and with museumlike activities ensures the dead will not be forgotten."  And that's the challenge for the small and neglected cemeteries, too.