Newton Cemetery (Newton, New Jersey)

Newton Cemetery is a cemetery in Newton, in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1860, the 24.05 acres (9.73 ha) cemetery is in current use and is owned and operated by the Newton Cemetery Company.[1]

Looking southward in Newton Cemetery, May 2013

It is the "new" cemetery in town—opening after the Old Newton Burial Ground (founded 1762) was filled.[2]

The Newton Cemetery Company was incorporated on 22 March 1860 by an act of the New Jersey state legislature.[3] It named seven men as "corporators", including Michael B. Titman, Moses W. Northrup, attorney Daniel S. Anderson, Samuel Cassady, the Reverend Nathaniel Pettit (of Christ Church, Newton), Thomas N. McCarter, and Whitfield S. Johnson. By 1866, the corporators had raised funds—approximately $16,000—to purchase a 26 acres (11 ha) tract of land from the heirs of Aaron Peck and open for burials. According to James P. Snell, the first interment was for Joseph A. Linn, who was buried in August 1867.[3] Five years later, in 1872, a local newspaper reported that "the number of interments is about 340--a large majority of which were re-interments from other places".[2]

Burial options at Newton Cemetery include interment in the cemetery's Mausoleum Chapel, erected in 1991.[4]

Notable burials
The grave marker for three children lost in caverns below Newton in 1909

The Lewis children's "cave grave"

In 1909, three local children were lost in the underground limestone caverns underneath the town of Newton. An entrance to these caves (now sealed) was located in the woods near the cemetery. Currently, a marker bearing the names of these three children, James W., Margaret, and J. Howard Lewis, is mounted in the face of the rock-outcropping approximately fifty-yards into the woods on the cemetery property. The magazine Weird NJ recounts that the daughter, Margaret found her way into the cave and got lost. Her two brothers went in to find her and also got lost.[7]

  • Looking south toward Henry C. Kelsey mausoleum, May 2013
  • Looking north, December 2011
  • Gravestone for industrialist and philanthropist Henry W. Merriam (1828-1900) and wife, Frances (1839-1897)
  • Gravestone for Mark McGarrity (aka Bartholomew Gill), crime fiction writer
  • Mausoleum for Henry C. Kelsey, former New Jersey Secretary of State, leader of "Kelsey Ring"
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References
  1. Town of Newton (New Jersey), Office of the Tax Assessor, "Tax Records for Block 18.01, Lot 1". Confirmed through Assessment Records Search and Harold E. Pellow & Associates, Inc., Newton Tax Map (Revised February 2012), Sheet 18. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  2. The Sussex Register, 20 June 1872.
  3. James P. Snell (compiler), History of Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881), 276.
  4. Newton Cemetery Company. Newton Cemetery: About Us. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  5. Lewis J. Martin, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed August 18, 2007.
  6. Robert Hamilton, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Accessed August 18, 2007.
  7. Sceurman, Mark and Moran, Mark. Weird New Jersey (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2003).

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