BREATHING LIFE INTO CEMETERIES

We tend to think of cemeteries as static features of the cultural landscape – a dead stop for our forebears. In actuality, every cemetery is in constant, albeit slow motion. New interments, foot traffic for grave visits and by those in search of quiet contemplation, animal life above and below ground, and all the while gravestones and monuments molder and erode. Intent on living our everyday lives, we may only give such final resting places a passing thought, but cemetery preservation and maintenance are critical activities that keep these commemorative places alive and well for our future reference.

Over the past few years Hunter Research has continued to specialize in cemetery studies, usually in support of efforts to protect and increase public awareness of the importance of historic graveyards. In our hometown of Trenton, with funding support from the New Jersey Historic Trust we have completed preservation plans for two of the city’s most revered resting places: the First Presbyterian churchyard on East State Street and the non-denominational Mercer Cemetery across from the Trenton Transit Center. In the case of the former, our plan has assisted in the 2024 award of a $750,000 National Trust for Historic Preservation grant for the rehabilitation of this historic burial ground (see press release here). We have also recently designed and installed historic interpretive signage at Locust Hill Cemetery, Trenton’s oldest surviving African American burial ground, located on Hart Avenue.

Elsewhere in New Jersey, at the 1758 Randolph Friends Meeting House in Morris County, we have undertaken ground-penetrating radar survey (with Horsley Archaeological Prospection), coupled with excavation, to identify and avoid unmarked graves in the Quaker burial ground ahead of a new parking lot (Randolph Friends homepage). At the other end of the state, outside Swedesboro, we are presently engaged resetting stones in a grave marker restoration project (with Lodestone Conservation) and completing GIS-based cemetery documentation at the 18th-century Moravian Church near Oldmans Creek. The first of these undertakings is being supported by the meeting house and grant funding from the Morris County Historic Preservation Trust Fund; the second by the Gloucester County Historical Society and the New Jersey Historic Trust.

Following in Clara Barton’s Footsteps

Over the past couple of years Hunter Research has been privileged to undertake archaeological work at two locations associated with esteemed humanitarian, nurse and educator Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

First, close to our Trenton home, working for the Bordentown Historical Society, we have investigated the Clara Barton Schoolhouse. This is where Barton, early in her storied career, opened and successfully operated the first free public school in New Jersey in 1852-53. Shortly thereafter, with enrolments rising and a new school building planned, the school board rudely replaced Barton with a male principal on the grounds that the position as head of such a large institution was unbefitting for a woman. The first schoolhouse still stands today, a charming one-and-a-half-story brick building, which for much of its existence has served as a residence. Our excavations exposed the remains of a rear kitchen addition and recovered artifacts from the period when the schoolhouse was home to two notable African-American families. Abraham Crippen, a prominent pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, lived there with his family from 1866 until 1872, followed by the family of Civil War veteran Henry Cole who were resident until around 1900.

More recently, in Glen Echo, Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington, DC, we have been part of a consultant team headed by Mills + Schnoering Architects, retained by the National Park Service to develop plans to rehabilitate the Clara Barton National Historic Site. This blufftop property, adjoining the delightful Glen Echo Park, was Barton’s home in her later life, the 38-room residence functioning as the nerve center for her many philanthropic and charitable endeavors. Our archaeological studies have focused on the remains of buildings and other buried features on the grounds associated with Barton’s occupation of the premises from the early 1890s until her death in 1912. The property is also yielding an abundance of Native American artifacts consistent with its ideal setting for camping on the bluffs overlooking the Potomac River.

Success! Ironworks and Academy Listed

Hunter Research is proud to announce the successful listing of two historic properties on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. 

Working with Connolly & Hickey Historical Architects for the Town of Boonton, Hunter Research detailed the archaeological potential of the Boonton Ironworks Historic District through the use of historic maps, photographs, GIS, and historical and archaeological research.  This site includes the remains of an important, fully integrated ironworks that underwent the conversion from charcoal to coal furnaces in the mid-19th-century. At its peak in the 1860s the ironworks employed over 600 workers and was producing 200,000 kegs of nails a day.  The district also includes elements of the Morris Canal, which supplied charcoal, coal, iron ore and water power to the early ironworks and the Morris & Essex Railroad, which supplied the works with iron and coal later in its history. 

The Mount Pleasant School, also known as the Richwood Academy, was built in 1870 in Harrison Township in Gloucester County. The schoolhouse is an excellent example of a two-story, two-room schoolhouse. It represents a model type of rural and small town school that was popular in New Jersey during the mid- to late 19th century.  The building features two exterior doors that could serve as separate entrances to upstairs and downstairs classrooms and featured minimal ornamentation in a vernacular Greek Revival style.  Of note are two fluted, cast-iron, interior columns that have structural and aesthetic characteristics.