We Know Where the Bodies are Buried

Over the past three or four years Hunter Research staff have developed and refined a methodology for documenting cemeteries using traditional recording and surveying techniques supplemented with drone photography and geographic information system (GIS) technology. We are now expert in creating interactive, query-able cemetery-specific GIS datasets with photographs of individual gravestones and web links to www.findagrave.com. This expertise was initially acquired through studies of several orphaned United Methodist cemeteries spread throughout New Jersey and of the much revered Pennington African Methodist Episcopal burial ground in Mercer County (penningtonafricancemetery.org/).

All self-respecting cities treasure their cemeteries.  Trenton, New Jersey, is no exception, with its deceased citizens consigned to numerous historic resting places around town, among them Riverview, St. Michael’s graveyard, Mercer Cemetery, the Quaker burying ground on East Hanover Street, Locust Hill and the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church.  This latter cemetery is the subject of an ongoing New Jersey Historic Trust-supported documentation project being conducted by our firm for the First Presbyterian Church of Trenton (www.fptrenton.org/) that will culminate in a preservation plan and GIS product due for completion in mid-2022. Our documentation skills are being challenged to the max by this densely packed patch of hallowed ground as we mesh our methodology with the historical record and add in ground penetrating radar (GPR) to our suite of investigative techniques. Would you care to hazard a guess as to the size of the cemetery population?  We’ll be back in touch with our own best guess later in the year!

Signing History on the LHT

The Lawrence Hopewell Trail is a one-of-a-kind, 20-mile hike-and-bike route that wends its sinuous way through some of the choicest rural and suburban acreage in central New Jersey’s Lawrence and Hopewell Townships (lhtrail.org). Created painstakingly, segment by segment, over more than 20 years by the local community, the LHT is beginning to tap its rich wayside history through an expanding series of interpretive signs that connects trail users to features in the cultural landscape that they might otherwise unknowingly pass on by.

Hunter Research, with graphic designer Douglas Scott, is currently developing a network of historic interpretive signs that highlight more than 30 points of historical interest along the trail. Covering topics as diverse as the late 17th-century Province Line, the cherished Brearley Oak and the mid-20th-century campuses of corporate giants Bristol Myers-Squibb and Educational Testing Services, these signs engage and inform. Each sign uses appealing historic images coupled with a brief narrative to bring local history back into the land of the living. Seven signs have been recently installed; another half-dozen are in the oven. Hop on that bike or lace up those trainers and go take a look.

William Trent House Redux

This past summer, Hunter Research teamed again with the Monmouth University Department of History and Anthropology reprising the successful archaeological field school of 2019 at the William Trent House in the heart of New Jersey’s historic capital city of Trenton. Funded by the William Trent House Association through grants from the New Jersey Historic Trust and NJM Insurance, a mix of students, academicians, cultural resource professionals and volunteers labored three days a week for six weeks under the direction of Monmouth University Professors Richard Veit and Adam Heinrich and Hunter Research Principal Archaeologist Jim Lee.

Most of the field effort was expended on expanding the excavations on the site of the 1742 kitchen wing and testing various ground-penetrating radar anomalies. The footprint of the kitchen wing with its indoor well is now well delineated and several other features of the site, including a 19th-century cess pit and colonial-era well, have been pinpointed. As in the 2019 field school, Native American and Contact period strata were sampled and an abundance of prehistoric and early historic cultural material has been recovered.

On the final weekend of the field school the general public were invited to an open day when the excavations were showcased for visitors. Also on hand were expert craftspeople giving primitive technology and pottery making demonstrations, while the house was open for tours. A presentation on the work conducted to date is anticipated at the fall meeting of the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology in St. Mary’s City, while analysis and report production are ongoing.

Concurrent with the field school, Hunter Research has been teaming with preservation architects and landscape architects Clarke Caton Hintz in completing The William Trent House Preservation Plan:  Historic Buildings and Grounds (July 2021), another New Jersey Historic Trust-supported endeavor, which provides a valuable synthesis and blueprint for managing the landscape, archaeology and interpretative treatment of the Trent House site in the years to come.