WBGO just had a nice piece on the Newark Avenue graveyard!

WBGO JOURNAL -- WBGO's award-winning half-hour news magazine, Fridays at 7:30PM.

BRINGING BACK A JERSEY CITY CEMETERY
A group of Jersey City residents is recovering some of that city?s lost history by restoring a 6.5 acre cemetery. David Cruz reports on how the desire to reconnect families with their loved ones has brought the burial ground back to life.

Hear it here:
http://www.wbgo.org/news/journal/

One thing that I would like to point out though is that the Underground Railroad was not underground (nor obviously was it a railroad) though many people often attempt to somehow tie it in to any historically old tunnels, but regardless it was a very nice report!

Remember people VOLUNTEER to do work at this cemetery.
There is no database of names, just reams of handwritten paper. If your loved ones are there please VOLUNTEER to help create a database. Take the project on and help!
If areas are overgrown, keep in mind, the VOLUNTEERS have hand tools and weed wackers. There is no commercial equipment. You may wish to donate a tractor or commercial lawn equipment. Try mowing the lawn there. If you work an entire day the progress you make is barely perceptible.
Eileen Markenstein and all her volunteers are amazing folks who contribute, not detract.

Quit complaining, understand the issues, (no one is getting paid) and try contributing YOUR time to make this a better place.

Historic Jersey City & Harsimus Cemetery rededicated as a memorial park

By The Jersey Journal
October 03, 2009, 5:39PM
Jersey Journal file photo

Eileen Markenstein, president of the newly rededicated Jersey City and Harsimus Memorial Park on Newark Avenue, held up a boot last year that was found at the site and believed to be from World War I. This weekend the cemetery board is hosting a festival at the historic grounds.

The historic Jersey City & Harsimus Cemetery at 435 Newark Ave. is celebrating its roots, which date to the Revolutionary War era this weekend as well as being renamed and rededicated as the Jersey City & Harsimus Memorial Park, according to today's Jersey Journal.

The six-and-a-half-acre cemetery, which is still active, was the site of Revolutionary War skirmishes and is the final resting place of soldiers and veterans of wars from that time onward, board president Eileen Markenstein said. Visitors can also find familiar names among the tombs of families of early settlers who had streets named after them.

A weekend-long festival began today and continues from noon to 6 p.m. tomorrow with art, music, dancing and tours. The event is part of the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour.

The board hopes to raise funds to restore some of the aging treasures in the cemetery and even open a museum to honor veterans in the 1831 caretaker's house.

Treasures from the Past



Added by Reena Sibayan on October 12, 2008 at 12:02 PM

Artifacts uncovered at the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery on Newark Avenue in Jersey City, Friday, October 10, 2008. Among those found were military supplies such as collapsible shovels and frying pans, boots and communications equipment. -- REENA ROSE SIBAYAN / THE JERSEY JOURNAL

Xerxes wrote:

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Ha! So true.

If every grave for every corpse had been preserved the Earth would now be one huge cemetery with room for nothing else.

Cemeteries have a livespan and when the corpses are rotted to dust, it's time to reclaim the land for the living.

Plots:
Yeah I think I own one by inheritance...it is empty. If I can find the deed I'm going to sell it or park a VERY small trailer on it...or drill for OIL!

David

I'm sure that you know the year that your grandparents passed away. Graves before 1900 are generally located along the back fence, near the crypt, or near the railroad tracks. Prominent families are along the three center lanes extending from the buildings along Waldo Avenue to the cemetery driveway (prominent in that the family plots and headstones are massive).

I grew up near the area and have several family members buried there including my great grandparents and father. I need to visit my dad's grave soon and wouldn't mind helping you find family members. You could also walk around Saturday morning when volunteers are cleaning the cemetery.

I agree with the poster that mentioned that it would take less than an hour or so to walk around the cemetery. Bring a machete, work gloves, wear long pants, and pm me if you wish (my avatar makes this a bit creepy).

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David, do you live close to Jersey City and able to do some research in person or just seeking some site recommendations?

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I'm not concerned about securing a plot because those people that read the lines on people's palms state that my work line is much longer than my life line. Apparently I'll be hard at work long after I'm dead. I guess I could be a crash test dummy or maybe I'll be abducted by aliens and stuffed as a fine human specimen for their Intergalactic Museum of Natural History. My life line also has a few gaps so I guess I'll also be frozen and thawed out a few times like Han Solo.

Anyhow, what really concerns me is the whole concept of a plot. Everyone gets a rectangular swath of land when they die. What will the planet look like a million years from now when there's nowhere to live because all the land is used for cemetery plots? You can't get that land back. Go watch the movie "Poltergeist" if you don't believe me.

I remember my parents and older members of my family often mentioning that they have a "plot". A place to be buried. It was a big concern in the old days. Planning for the future. Everybody had to have a "plot" lest they be buried in Potter's field or just thrown in the gutter to rot. Oh the shame of it to die without a plot! What would people think? They might not own a house or a horse or a car or a pot to piss in but they hadda have that "plot". I think a "plot" will accomodate 6 people comfortably, stacked 3 high. It's nice to decompose with family members. Anyway, I think all my family "plots" are full up, standing room only, so I don't know what they're gonna do with me. I have casually mentioned to family that I wouldn't mind being incinerated, it's much cheaper and there's no perpetual upkeep cost. Does the JC Incinerator Authority do this? So here's the question. Does anybody here have a "plot"? Do you plan that far ahead?

With the proviso that there is a section of the cemetery on the east side (there's a hill and then a slope) that is MASSIVELY overgrown and you can clearly see there are graves back there but you'd need a machete to get thru.

Good luck, sorry I don't have anything more helpful to add.

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Expecting answers NOW from an entity mired with problems will just leave you frustrated.

Have you ever been there? It's not very big. You can probably find anyone buried there in under a half hour.

I was told by my 80 year-old aunt that my great grandparents are buried here, as is my grandfather's brother, his wife and young son. I am outraged and want answers NOW. I too call the cemetery three times in August and no one has had the decency to return my call. Besides findagrave.com, is there any compiled lists of names of who is buried here? I may have to go grave to grave to try to locate them. Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

I was born in Jersey City and have lived here for the past 51 years. I just recently starting tracing my family through Ancestry.com. I have just found out that my great-granfather and great-grandmother are buried in this cemetery. My Mom, who is now 91 years old, told me she remembered going with her grandfather to this cemetery when she was a very young girl to visit her grand-mothers grave. I visited this cemetery on Feb 18, 2008 trying to locate their graves. My husband and I walked up and down the what used to be rows of headstones in a futile attempt to find my great-grandparents graves. Since there was a car in the driveway by the house, we rang the bell, but nobody answered. There was a number on the door to call and I called and left my cell number asking if someone could tell my where John Mathew Austin was buried. Obviously nobody returned my call. However, whicle we were walking around in the rain, trying to find the headstones, people came out of the house. We called to them, they looked and just got in their car and took off. I understand from the postings that these people were no longer being paid, but that's no reason to leave us walking around in the rain. Had the had to decency to at least talk with us, perhaps this so called locked file with the records could have been opened to supply me with information that would have allowed me to continue tracing my heritage. I believe my grandfather died in 1939, and my grandmother quite a few years before him. Do you think there is any hope of ever obtaining informaiton on their burials? Also, it shoul dbe noted that it was February when we were there, which is not long after the last board members death in December, however, there was bramble, beer botles, a multitude of overturned headstones, headstones falling down the hill, etc. It appears as theough this cemetery was not being kept for much longer than 2 months.

New board for formerly abandoned cemetery

Saturday, June 14, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

It's the start of a new era at the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery.

The Newark Avenue graveyard, which had fallen into disrepair in recent months after its caretakers moved away, has a new board of trustees, a group of seven elected at a meeting Thursday.

About 35 plot owners met at the Hudson County Improvement Authority in Jersey City and picked Eileen Markenstein, of Union City, as president and treasurer, although she could not be at the meeting and was represented by her sister.

Several people at the meeting said Markenstein's financial experience working for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter would be an asset to the cemetery, which has more than $17,000 in trust and an undetermined amount in other accounts.

Two members of the state New Jersey Cemetery Board, which regulates non-religious cemeteries, presided over the meeting, along with Executive Director Dianne Tamaroglio and the state board's attorney, Ginger Provost.

Attorney Jorge Aviles, a former Journal Square councilman with an office at Five Corners, was elected vice president. He said he was eager to help because his son was buried in the cemetery in 1996, and he has lived nearby on Magnolia Avenue for 43 years.

"If somebody's going to sincerely take care of that place, nobody's in a better position to do that than me," Aviles said.

Also elected were secretary Jasmine Pinet, of Jersey City; Darlene Cimino, of Bayville; Michelle Egar, a member of the Jersey City Parks Coalition; Brian Lamb, of Jersey City; and Hector Sullivan, who has worked as a groundskeeper at the cemetery for the last four years.

The former board's last active member died in December. The cemetery's caretakers, Jorge and Flor Peralta, who lived in the house by its entrance, moved away this spring because there was no one left to pay them.

The NJCB and state Attorney General's office will help the new board determine the state of the cemetery's finances and find records that are believed to be locked in a safe in the house.

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It is a pretty interesting cemetery, and several of my family members are buried there. The county actually had an inmate cleanup crew working for a few hours in the cemetery last week, so the publicity is having some impact.

The cemetery never extended to the island section but does extend nearly to the railroad tracks beneath the Waldo Avenue pedestrian bridge. The long brick wall on Waldo Avenue above the cemetery is is the old foundation of a WWI armory that burned and lit up the sky for an entire night in the early 70's. For urban explorers, the Jersey City Cemetery is a must. You can still find old army relics on top of the largest crypt at the base of the wall.

Unfortunately, many of the crypts have been raided and the 100 to 150 year old remains were desecrated by sick grave robbers.

Waldo Avenue above the cemetery before 1920 was just an overgrown wooded area owned by Samuel Waldo who built three brownstones on the corner of Waldo and Magnolia Avenues in the 1860's.

Until it was cut down in 1871, an ancient tulip tree known as the "King of the Woods" stood on the brow of the hill overlooking the site of the Jersey City Cemetery. General Lafayette was said to have encamped under the shade of this tree in 1779.


BELOW IS AN OLD Lithograph showing Newark Avenue near Waldo and Magnolia Avenues.

Meeting tomorrow on neglected cemetery

by Paul Koepp
Wednesday June 11, 2008, 5:35 PM

The New Jersey Cemetery Board will discuss options for maintaining the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery at a special meeting tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Hudson County Improvement Authority, 574 Summit Ave., Jersey City.

No one has been running the Newark Avenue cemetery since the last active member of its board of directors died last December and it has fallen into disrepair.

The meeting is open to the public and will be held in a conference room on the fifth floor.

CEMETERY BLUES
Weeds, missing funds plague site

Monday, May 19, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The Newark Avenue cemetery seen by millions as the final resting place for several characters from "The Sopranos" needs to be whacked - weed-whacked, that is.

The grass is now waist-high at the historic Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery, where nearly $100,000 in cemetery funds is unaccounted for.

Family members arriving for a graveside visit bring flowers - and sometimes their own lawncare equipment.

Angel Ortega had a hard time finding his mother's grave on Mother's Day until he cut the grass himself. In another section of the cemetery, his 5-year-old son nearly fell into a grave covered loosely by a stone slab.

"It's a tragedy I had to come here on Mother's Day to do this," Ortega said. "Other families left because they couldn't even find their loved ones."

The cemetery's last annual report, filed in January 2007, shows that eight burials were done there in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2006. At that time, the cemetery had $17,575 in its maintenance fund at Hudson City Savings Bank, as well as $81,165 in four other accounts, records show.

The cemetery no longer has a board of directors, and its caretakers have all moved away or died, authorities told The Jersey Journal.

Officials on the New Jersey Cemetery Board, which regulates non-religious cemeteries, have said they do not know if the money is still there.

Local funeral directors say they have no idea what to tell people making arrangements for family members who planned to be buried in the cemetery, since the caretakers have all died or moved away.

Several directors said they have faced that situation in recent weeks and had to accommodate the families in different cemeteries.

"I wouldn't know what to tell them," said Vincent Grauso, of McLaughlin Funeral Home, adding that the funeral home seldom does burials there. "You can't dig the grave yourself."

Bill Bromirski, of Bromirski Funeral Home, said the cemetery has long been plagued by shoddy record-keeping. "You had to be a magician to find the right grave in there," he said.

Anita Quinn and her husband Francis, both 85, are worried they will not be able to use the plot her family bought 80 years ago. "We're just wondering what's going to happen," she said.

Meanwhile, conditions at the crowded five-acre cemetery continue to deteriorate. The day before Mother's Day, Barbara Tedino, of North Bergen, found she could no longer get to her parents' grave because it's so overgrown with weeds.

"I can't believe this would happen to a cemetery and Jersey City won't do anything," she said.

Jersey City and Hudson County officials say they have no interest in maintaining the cemetery, and the Jersey City Incinerator Authority, which helped with a recent cleanup, will do no more work there unless it receives extra state funding, according to Executive Director Oren Dabney.

Jeff Lamm, spokesman for the state Cemetery Board, said he was not sure if anyone has expressed interest in creating a new local board of directors. It would have to be formed through a meeting of current plot owners.

Anyone with questions about internment issues at the cemetery can call the NJCB at (973) 504-6553.

PAUL KOEPP can be reached at 201-217-2400.

Some see new life for abandoned Newark Avenue graveyard

Monday, May 12, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Several people who have shown interest in tending to the run-down Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery will first have to clear a big hurdle - finding missing records and an orphaned trust fund rumored to hold more than $40,000.

The key to solving the mystery may be a set of keys that would allow entry into the locked house at the Newark Avenue entrance that was occupied until recently by the caretakers of the 179-year-old graveyard, which is being overrun by vegetation and has many toppled grave markers.

The keys have now been located and the house will be searched soon, according to Jeff Lamm, spokesman for the New Jersey Cemetery Board, which regulates non-religious ceremonies.

At a meeting of the NJCB Thursday in Newark, several people involved in a recent cleanup of the cemetery said they want a new board of directors to be set up because the previous one has faded into oblivion as its members died off.

The NJCB told them that a new board can be formed through a meeting of all current plot owners.

Two such owners, Darlene Cimino and Mildred Kwozko, said they also want to know what happened to the $2,000 in fees they each paid to have their mothers buried in the cemetery this year.

"We do not know exactly where it all is at the present time," admitted NJCB member William Nichols. He said it's not known how much money is in the cemetery's required maintenance and preservation fund, which takes in 15 percent of the revenue from each plot sale.

Also at the meeting was Louis Cicalese, who said he manages 13 cemeteries across the state. He said he could invest up to $200,000 and generate revenue at the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery by placing new plots in the current walkways and possibly building a mausoleum and crematorium.

"I think the problems can be solved there," Cicalese said. "The first step is to get all the information."

Meanwhile, local radio host Pat O'Melia says he too is interested in putting together a group, composed of local developers, to oversee a restoration of the cemetery. O'Melia wrote in a letter to the NJCB that he had arranged for the Jersey City Incinerator Authority and Hudson County Improvement Authority to maintain the grounds until a new board is formed.

PAUL KOEPP can be reached at (201) 217-2400.

I remember hearing stories that the whole area (including "the islands") used to be a large cemetery, and that site is all that remains of it.

Either way, it is horrible to hear that no one is maintaining it?Hopefully they get that resolved sooner rather than later.

Just to make it clear: this is the cemetery on Newark between P.S. 5/Madame Claude's and Journal Square.

Here's a good Web article about the cemetery.

One interesting bit in the article is that the cemetery is in something called the Horseshoe District.

Here's a description of the Horseshoe District:

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Walking around that cemetery was an interesting experience. I'd almost describe it as a field of grassy moguls. More than a century of erosion and decay seems to have created voids beneath the surface. I imagine a lot of groundwater from the Palisades drains through it on the way downhill... probably a bad place for graves in the first place.

On the positive side, it's one of the few remaining places near the downtown area where the town's history is still apparent.

HISTORIC CEMETERY DECAYS
Who will take over neglected graveyard?

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The grass is ankle-high and growing at the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery, but no one is there to cut it.

The historic Newark Avenue graveyard, which opened in 1829, has fallen into disrepair as all of its caretakers have died or moved away, according to residents, state officials and family members of those who are buried there.

Dozens of headstones in the four-acre cemetery are on the ground, askew or overgrown by weeds, and the Jersey City Incinerator Authority took away two truckfuls of trash Saturday afternoon following a cleanup by about 20 people.

Millie Kwozko, of Paramus, recently visited the grave of her mother, who died in January, and saw the flowers she left had still not been cleared and the plot's dirt had not been leveled.

She helped organize the cleanup along with Darlene Cimino, who has about a dozen family members buried in the graveyard. Cimino's aunt, Maureen Burgess, was the last active member of the cemetery's board of directors before she died in December.

"We thought we could at least clean it up for Mother's Day," she said.

A couple who lived in the house at the cemetery's entrance and was paid by the cemetery association to perform upkeep moved out in March, several people said. The house appeared vacant yesterday except for a satellite dish and several "beware of dog" signs.

According to records on the Web site of the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees the New Jersey Cemetery Board, the license for the Jersey City-Harsimus Cemetery expired in 1999 but is still listed as "active."

Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the NJCB, said that if another operator takes over the graveyard, it would pay for maintenance through a capital fund required of all non-religious cemeteries, which the board regulates.

The NJCB wrote to Jersey City and Hudson County earlier this year about possibly taking over upkeep, Lamm said, but the county hasn't replied and the city isn't interested.

"We have received and reviewed a letter from the state regarding the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery and have determined that the city does not have the resources nor the expertise to oversee this cemetery," city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said.

The NJCB will discuss the cemetery's status at a meeting May 8 at 10:30 a.m. at 124 Halsey St., Newark.

Andy Panzariello, who lives nearby, noticed the neglect about a month ago. He said he's especially concerned about the state of soldiers' graves and the flags left near them.

"It's a disgrace how they lay," he said. "The cemetery has never been 100 percent taken care of."