By Sunayana Prabhu
MIDDLETOWN – While fake cemeteries decorate front lawns this Halloween season, there are real ones in the township that could use some help. Middletown’s Historic District & Landmarks Commission is making no bones about declaring over 31 abandoned and inactive cemeteries in the township in need of a lot of TLC.
Middletown officials are actively seeking volunteers to clean up some of the oldest abandoned cemeteries representing centuries of the township’s history. Some are hidden in plain sight on busy roads while others are in the middle of deeply wooded areas but the one thing they have in common? They all need attention.
Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger (R), who also chairs the Middletown Historic Landmarks Commission, said a big part of the issue is ownership of the property. “Four hundred years ago, they just put aside a plot of land for a burial ground.” He noted that unless the plot was attached to a church, often whoever owned the property next to it took ownership of it. Over the years that ownership has become the responsibility of the municipality, Scharfenberger said.
The township, churches and even the county maintain some of these cemeteries, but those that are not maintained are overgrown with weeds, fallen branches and briars. Some of the headstones have fallen down and the footstones are disappearing into the ground.
Roseann Eteson, a Middletown landmarks commissioner who is in charge of the preservation of the historic cemeteries, said there are 31 abandoned and inactive burial grounds across the township that the commission hopes to preserve and maintain through the Adopt-a-Historic Cemetery program. The intention is two-fold – to provide volunteer opportunities to the community and also to preserve Middletown’s history.
Eteson noted the number of cemeteries is always changing as more are discovered. A lot of family burial grounds prior to the 1850s were not registered with municipalities. In 1850 a law made it mandatory to register burial grounds. You could no longer bury people “in your backyard,” Scharfenberger said. But because many have no markers, “they could be anywhere.” Most Middletown cemeteries are “fairly well known,” he said, but “some have weeds taller than the gravestones” and those are the ones Eteson said she really wants to see cleaned up.
The significance of maintaining these cemeteries is that the people buried there are “a measure of our past,” Scharfenberger said. “Everybody who’s buried in these cemeteries had a hand in the town we live in today.”
Middletown is one of the four original towns in New Jersey established officially in 1664. “When you have such an early establishment,” he said, everybody from farmers to businesspeople, local government officials, veterans from every war, from the Revolutionary War up to the present, “are all milestones in history.”
In a small cemetery called the Throckmorton-Lippit-Taylor Burying Ground on Penelope Lane that connects Kings Highway to Route 35 is the grave of Penelope Stout, one of Middletown’s original colonial settlers. “She lived to be 110,” Schafenberger said, “and she lived to see over 500 descendants.”
Some of the 17th and 18th-century cemeteries belong to the earliest settlers in the township. Many streets in town are named after these families. Their burial grounds are located in the woods among residential neighborhoods, like the Village and Chapel Hill areas and others.
Many nonprofits and businesses with a community service wing have contributed to restoring these cemeteries. In recent years, the Boy Scouts completing Eagle projects have restored the Applegate Burial Ground in Leonardo, the Drummer Boy/Herbert Cottrell on Old Country Road, the Hartshorne Cemetery on Kings Highway and the Throckmorton-Lippit-Taylor Burying Ground.
Eteson said the historic cemeteries are embedded in Middletown’s early history and American heritage and their restoration and maintenance could be rewarding for individuals seeking to contribute. Tasks include cleaning out the brush and fallen branches and, if possible, erecting the fallen headstones and resetting the footstones in the ground.
The township’s website provides a short list of locations and names of abandoned cemeteries in need of attention. Some of them include the Maxson Robbins burial grounds located at Locust Point and Lakeside, the Bennett family at Newman Springs Road in Lincroft, the Dennis family at Harley Road, and many more.
Call it burial grounds, God’s acre, a garden of remembrance or a boneyard, when you find yourself amid distinguished men and women now resting for eternity you might just feel more gratitude – right in time for Thanksgiving. If you are interested in restoring one of the historic cemeteries in Middletown, more information can be found on the township’s website at middletownnj.org on the Historic District & Landmarks Commission page. The commission promotes the overall development of the township by preserving its historic and cultural structures and districts. The commission meets every third Thursday of the month at the Middletown Township Public Library at 7 p.m.
The article originally appeared in the October 26 – November 1, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
