Members of Monmouth University’s Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity put the 800-pound headstone of Annie and Janie Reeves back on its pedestal during cleanup efforts at Lincroft’s Cedar View Cemetery.
Photo by Rick Geffken
By Rick Geffken
LINCROFT – On a beautiful fall day Oct. 26 Monmouth University sorority and fraternity members worked to revitalize the historic Cedar View Cemetery on Hurley’s Lane.
Long neglected primarily because of confusion over ownership, and thick with weeds, briars, and fallen trees, the African-American burial ground is on property adjoining St. Leo the Great’s Roman Catholic Church and school. St. Leo’s has helped draw attention to the plight of the 2-acre plot as has the T. Thomas Fortune Foundation.
Gilda Rogers of the foundation formed an action group several months ago to organize this latest clean-up effort. She engaged with St. Leo parishioner Joelle Zabotka, Ph.D., who teaches at Monmouth University and who conducted a similar cleanup several years ago.
Photo by Rick Geffken
Undergraduates from the West Long Branch school were looking for worthwhile projects as part of the university’s Big Event Day. More than 50 young women and men volunteered to clear debris from the graves at the Lincroft cemetery, first established in 1850 by 14 African-American men.
The school’s website describes the Big Event as “the single largest community service project that takes place at Monmouth University every year. Every fall, approximately 400 to 500 members of the Monmouth University community volunteer at one of the 30 to 35 Big Event work sites in the towns that surround campus.”
Cedar View Cemetery is an anomaly, one of the few Monmouth County cemeteries entirely owned by African Americans in the mid-19th century. No one knows the exact number of souls buried there, but among the identified burials are members of the Reeves family. Rob Shomo, formerly of Sea Bright and now living in North Carolina, did extensive research on the cemetery. Many of his ancestors are buried there, including Silas Reeves who served with the U. S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. Reeves is one of a half-dozen or so members of these troops who rest in Cedar View.
Nine members of Monmouth University’s Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity at Cedar View last Saturday moved logs and leaves from gravesites before volunteering for the heaviest task of their particular Big Event – moving an 800-pound headstone back onto its pedestal.
The business majors, perhaps anticipating their future careers, held a meeting and debated the best way to move the stone which they found leaning against a tree. They decided to use logs as rollers and then leveraged the massive 1922 memorial to Annie and Janie Reeves back into place.
