Autumn Years Spring 2024

Rural cemeteries Rural cemeteries, also known as garden cemeteries, are a style of cemetery that became popular in the mid-1800s. They often contain elaborate monuments, memorials and mausoleums in a land scaped, park-like setting. The rural cem etery movement mirrored changing at titudes toward death. Monuments with grandeur and signs of immortality be came popular in rural cemeteries. These stood in contrast to the simple tomb stones of earlier cemeteries. Statues and memorials included depictions of angels and cherubs as well as botanical motifs such as ivy (representing memory), oak leaves (for immortality), poppies (for sleep) and acorns (for life). In 1851, the New Jersey Legislature created “An act authorizing the incorpo ration of rural cemetery associations.” This allowed, for the first time, cemeter ies to be created as for-profit businesses (any cemetery created after 1971 must be nonprofit). These cemeteries were intended as civic institutions designed

Church Cemetery. Francis Jackson, a freed slave, purchased 7¾ acres of wood land there in 1868. “A plain neat little church” and cemetery were built around 1873. The cemetery had 72 burial plots, which may have included former slaves. The church and the tombstones no lon ger exist, but the names of some families who rest here are noted on the historical marker at the site. In Little Ferry (on Summit Place), a cemetery was established in 1860 for the “coloured population of Hacken sack.” It was incorporated in 1901 by African-American trustees as Geth semane Cemetery. This one-acre lot contains about 500 interments of freed blacks, former slaves, as well as a num ber of Caucasians. Few stones survive, but grave-marker artifacts traceable to African burial practices have been dis covered. Since 1985, the site has been owned and maintained by the County of Bergen. In 1884 Samuel Bass, the beloved sex ton of the First Baptist Church in Hack ensack, died suddenly. The mostly white congregation wanted to honor him with a proper burial, so the church purchased a plot at Hackensack Cemetery. Upon learning the deceased was a black man, the cemetery refused the burial. Bass was then laid to rest in Gethsemane Cem etery. Outraged, the church petitioned

the Governor and Legislature to correct this injustice. With the support of oth ers, New Jersey’s “Negro Burial Bill”—as it was then called—was passed, making it a crime for a cemetery to refuse burial to anyone because of race. The penalty was a fine of up to $500. Cemetery own ers often found ways around the new law, however, by relegating black burials to separate areas (or simply ignoring the law). The Bass family later had Samuel’s remains relocated to Philadelphia, his home city.

Brookside Cemetery, c.1910 (Englewood).

Slave tombstone (Mahwah).

SPRING 2024 I AUTUMN YEARS 41