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Perry Cemetery-Harrington Park Historical Society

Old Hook Road

Harrington Park, NJ 07640

(201)768-2615

http://www.harringtonparkhistoricalsociety.com/

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=241777

Open: Dusk to Dawn

Admission: Free

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g46493-d33215615-Reviews-Perry_Cemetery-Harrington_Park_New_Jersey.html

The historical significance of for the cemetery

The Perry family cemetery is a small family plot in Harrington Park, NJ and example of a time when families still buried their loved ones on property that family’s thought would be there for generations. Many generations of the family are buried here showing the family’s love of this land but like too many tiny cemeteries throughout Bergen County have been lost in time by the family buried there.

Today it sits quiet and respectful and somewhat over grown. Nature now surrounds it.

The Perry Cemetery History:

(From the Harrington Park Historical Society)

The Perry Cemetery is a small family burial ground located on what was the farm of David Perry (1809-1871). The Old Burying Ground cemetery is part of the land apportioned to Garret Huybertsen Blauvelt, son of one of the original sixteen grantees of the Tappan Patent approved by the Governor of New York in 1686. Although there are believed to be earlier ones, the first known burial was in 1722 and the last in 1905.

The Perry Family Cemetery sits quietly on a stretch of Old Hook Road

(From the Harrington Park Historical Society)

The Perry Cemetery is situated in the Borough of Harrington Park on Old Hook Road, east of Bogert’s Mill Road opposite the United Water Company building. David Perry had devised by his will, signed on July 18,1868 that: “the burying ground where the same now is, westerly of my dwelling house, of the use of 40’ square, I give unto all my children to be kept by them and their posterity as a place of burial forever.”

The Perry family tree of loved ones buried at the cemetery

(From the Historical Marker Database)

When David wrote his will, his great-grandson Perry Cole (1866-1867) already had been buried in the small plot. By the end of 1871, six members of the Perry Family had been laid to rest within yards of the family house. The last burial at the cemetery was that of David’s great-grandson, Claude Yeomans (1887-1940). There are a total of twelve people interred at the Perry Cemetery.

The untimely death of many members of David’s family is a reminder of the struggles and uncertainties that people of that period routinely endured. The property remained in the Perry Family until the 1920s when it was purchased by the Hackensack Water Company to become part of the Oradell Reservoir. The graves are laid out in four even rows facing East and the markers are either marble or granite.

The Perry Family tree starting with the marriage of David Perry to Catherine Blauvelt