Research Continues Toward Preserving African Burying Ground

It may be a while before passersby notice anything different, but Bedminster Mayor Steve Parker said that local historians and other interested parties from nearby are working "slowly and diligently" to permanently mark and preserve the "African Burying Ground" on Hillside Ave in the township.

He said that the Bedminster Township Historic Preservation Commission and others are working to exactly get the working right for a historic marker that the township will ask Somerset County to erect at a tenth-of an acre site that was once part of the Bedminster municipal building property.

"It's kind of like a tweet. You only have so many characters on that marker," Parker told the Bedminster Township Committee last week.

Meanwhile, the county already has its approved markers lined up for this year, so the township will apply for a marker to be placed on the site in 2014, Parker said.

New historic facts about the location are being continually researched, Parker noted.

"A lot of interesting things have been uncovered not only by folks who are on the historic commission, but also by folks who are helping the commission," Parker said.

There has been plenty of activity in July by those planning how to commemorate the unmarked cemetery, including a new name chosen last week by the Bedminster Township Historic Preservation Commission — the "African Burying Ground."

That name was found in early 19th century records from Bedminster's Dutch Reformed Church, said Tom Buckingham, vice-president of the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission, and also vice-president of the Somerset County Historical Society.

The township Historic Preservation Commission, meeting in July with Buckingham and others who are interested in the history of the site, announced that other research identified eight people buried at the location. The now-outlined 66-by-66-foot plot is at the front of a vacant parcel of township-owned land that previously housed Bedminster's municipal building until it was torn down in 2011. 

Nancy Piwowar of Plainfield, who serves on various cultural and historic boards in that area, found information that Robert Aaron, the free black Bedminster resident who was one of the purchasers of the cemetery property, had been a beekeeper, an important role in Colonial times, and likely the first known African-American beekeeper in New Jersey.

Continuing efforts to preserve the site are being reported on a website set up by neighbor Basil Scaperdas, and others with interest in the project: www.hillsidememorialcommittee.com.

The historic commission is scheduled to meet again in September. Last month, Parker advised its members to provide a report to the Township Committee whenever the commission is ready.

Scaperdas said last month he eventually would like to see the burying ground as carefully preserved as an already-preserved cemetery for black residents in Lamington.

For more information, please read "Slave Cemetery, 'God's Neglected Acre,' Commemorated in Bedminster."