The Old Tappan Cemetery is still an active cemetery even though its location in the woods surrounded by McMansions.
The oldest part of the cemetery sits on the highest bluff overlooking the woods and the street. The Eckerson family burial plot is located here with graves dating back to before Revolutionary War.
The Old Tappan Cemetery sits on a hill in the woods
The oldest part of the cemetery sits on the very top of the hill overlooking the neighborhood
The site houses the graves of the Eckerson and Haring families
The Eckerson family graves
The Wortendyke branch of the family
The graves of Revolutionary War veteran Cornelius Eckerson and his wife, Elizabeth Haring. It looks like someone stole Cornelius’s headstone.
The Eckerson Haring Wortendyke family plots
Within the confines of the property, there were even modern graves of the Eckerson family dating back to about twenty years ago. The Eckerson family is still buried here in the Twenty-First century.
The cemetery is in a quiet corner between two house in what was once the Haring Farm
The family that is buried here:
(From the Dutch Door Genealogy website)
When some of this property, which originally had belonged to Abraham Jans Haring
according to the Zabriskie genealogy, was sold in 1785, ownerhip of the burial plot
was retained, and is described as being one square chain, which is 66 feet on each
side.
HARING FAMILY BURIAL PLOT AT NORWOOD, BERGEN COUNTY, N.J. ON THE PROPERTY NOW KNOWN AS THE ALLISON FARM.
10718 Abraham J. Haring d.1.1.1801 b.9.30.1720 a.80.3.1 (Tap. #358)
Broken stone
10719 David P. Haring d.9.15.1853 a.78.3.18 (Tap.#2418)
10720 Lydia Zabriskie w. of (Sch.p.186) David P. Haring d.12.30.1869 a.89.4.13
10721 Peter D. Haring d.4.2.1864 a.56.7.22 (Tap.#3727)
10722 Betsey Bogert w. Peter D. Haring d.12.31.1890 a.79.4.6
10723 Ruth Haring d.3.3.1876 a.0.2.14
10724 Bessie Haring d.10.2.1877 a.0.7.24
Betsey Bogart Haring and Peter Haring
Ruth and Bessie Haring who died as children
The tombstone of Cornelius Haring (I could barely read this)
Admission: Free, the gates are open across from the baseball field.
My review on TripAdvisor:
The sign for the French Burying Ground
The historic marker in the front of the cemetery
The French Burying Ground
The French Ground is a small historic cemetery once sat next to the French Church and the David Demarest House, that has since been moved to the Bergen County Historical Society site.
The Demarest House at the Bergen County Historical Society
The graves of members of the Bogert, Demarest and Christi families
The History of the French Burying Ground:
(from the New Jersey Historic Trust)
Thought to be oldest cemetery in Bergen County, the French Huguenot-Demarest Cemetery was established in 1677 as the final resting place for prominent French Huguenot and Dutch settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. David Demarest purchased approximately 2,000 acres of land along the east bank of the Hackensack River from Native Americans in 1677 to establish a colony of French-Huguenots.
The cemetery is all that remains of the original French-Huguenot colony and has more than four dozen descendants of Demarest family buried on site. The Borough of New Milford acquired the property in 2018 and has been working closely with the New Milford Historic Preservation Commission to plan for its restoration and future interpretation.
The French Burying site sign
The cemetery (technically a graveyard since there was a church once here) is the final resting place of many of Bergen Counties Revolutionary War veterans as well as many prominent families including the Demarest, the Bogert and the Christie families. These were some of the founding families of Bergen County.
The graves of the prominent Bogert and Van Saun families
The cemetery has a quiet elegance about it with the many different styles of tombstones and the sheer history of these families and their contributions to the creation of our country.
The historical marker notes the cemetery was first used in 1677 after an agreement with the Native Americans
The back part of the cemetery
Members of the Bogert family
Members of the prominent Bogert family
Members of the prominent Demarest family with Revolutionary War veteran Reverend John Demarest
Members of the prominent Demarest family
The historic marker of the original church site
There are many of the veterans of the Revolutionary War buried at the site some of which survived the battles and went on to have productive lives in their communities.
Veteran John Van Norden
Veteran Uzal Meeker
Veteran John Demarest
Veteran Cornelius Bogert
Veteran Willimpie Bogart Demarest
The grave of Patriot Abraham Demarest
This cemetery, like the rest of the small cemeteries and graveyards that dot Bergen County show the history and significance of these families contributions of the residents of early Bergen County and how they shaped the founding of this country.
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 treeofloved 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
Son Henry and Daughter Rachel’s tombstones
Patriarchs David Perry and his wife, Catherine Blauvelt Perry
The last David Perry to be buried in the family plot
The family plot facing the stream
The Patriarchs of the family stand in the middle
The newest graves in the cemetery
The latest burials in the family plot
Video on the Perry Cemetery from the Harrington Park Historical Society
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 