The DeWolf-Haring family cemetery sits on a homeowners front yard
The DeWolf-Haring Cemetery is one of the most unusual of the small cemeteries in Bergen County that I have seen. It sits right in front of someone’s front yard.
The cemetery probably at one time sat at the very edge of the farmland which is now a golf club and a neighborhood of McMansions. It shows the progress of the area as the farmland was sold off.
The gravesite of John Haring
The DeWolf-Haring family; grandparents and grandson
It was interesting that the last person buried here was the wife of Martin DeWolf’s grandson. I am still trying to figure out how they had funeral services on the edge of someone’s front lawn.
The Haring family graves
The grave site sits in front of someone’s driveway
The cemetery is nicely maintained and treated with great respect. I am not sure by either the town or the homeowner.
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.
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.
One afternoon I took a trip into my very distant past. I visited the tiny Haring family Farm Cemetery, which is the resting place of Cornelius Haring and his family. The cemetery is what is left of what was once a several hundred acre farm owned by the extensive Haring family of Bergen County, NJ.
The burial site had been hidden for years and the site neglected until restored by Eagle Scout, Anakin Rybacki in 2020
The history of the site extends back to the 17th century. “The immigrant ancestor was Jan Pieter Haring, who came from the Netherlands in the early 1660s. He was the leader of a group that purchased 16,000 acres in the Bergen/Rockland area, after living first in New Netherlands, now Manhattan,” said family descendant Regina Haring (Brown, NorthJersey.com).
Each of the historic tombstones are encased in a plastic box
The teen who renovated this cemetery encased each of the tombstones to preserve the place and history of each person buried on the site. Most of the tombstones were left in pieces by the time the renovation had started. This small cemetery is dedicated to the people who once lived here and passed away at the farm.
The grave site of Margaret Alyea
The grave of William Holdrum
The grave of Abraham Haring
Another simple tombstone of Elizabeth Haring
Some of the tombstones needed a serious cleaning
The grave of Elizabeth Blauvelt Haring
The cemetery from the entrance of the site
The sign on the site marking the fencing for the Haring Farm Cemetery
The cemetery is an interesting example of rural life in Bergen County when these early Dutch families would bury their loved ones on the family property rather than in the local churches.
My Class visit:
I stopped in at the Haring Farm Cemetery for a tour for their class project on Historical Cemeteries for the ‘Bergen 250’. This is for another Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. project.
So I got there early, raked the cemetery and tidied up the tombstones and cleaned and organized the signs. It looked so much better.
The Haring Farm Cemetery the morning of the tour. Much more respectable looking.
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 