Local group spruces up historic cemetery

Piscatawaytown
burial ground dates
back to Colonial times
BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer

MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Volunteer Pat Clark and his son Nicholas, 6, cart away bags full of the brush that coated the historic Piscatawaytown Burial Grounds, Woodbridge Avenue, on Sunday.

If tombstones could talk, those at the Piscatawaytown Burial Ground in Edison might say thank you to some volunteers for making their stories of local lore more legible.

The historic cemetery that sits next to St. James Church on Woodbridge Avenue was treated to a cleanup on Saturday, organized by the Edison Greenways Group, that made the stones’ worn stories easier to decipher. Brush was cleared, trash was tossed, trees were trimmed and mulch was moved around to make the historic grounds thrive and give the resting places of many original settlers, Civil War heroes — and even a witch — more room to breathe.

Nestled in the oldest neighborhood in Edison, the graveyard’s ghosts haunt residents to this day with the stories their graves have unearthed. Some are hauntingly humorous, others are heavy with history, according to literature compiled by the Greenways Group.

The oldest stone is that of the Hoopar brothers. Dating back to 1693, the etching on the grave marking tells a tale of the brothers who died an untimely death from eating poison mushrooms.

It says, in verse:

"Underneath this tomb

lies 2 boyes that lay in one womb

The eldest was full 13 years old

The yongest was V twice told

By eating mushroms for food rare

In days time they poyseoned were

Richard Hoopar and Charles Hoopar

Desesed August Anno Dom 1693"

The graveyard is also the resting place of original Edison settler Thomas W. Harper, who, according to legend and literature provided by the Greenways Group, was killed during a tornado in 1835. To seek shelter from the storm, Harper, legend has it, was told to go to the inn across the street from the church near the graveyard.

"Harper then said he would not fear God until he felt his power," the Greenways literature said. "He was then struck with a timber from the church and died four days later."

A legendary witch of colonial times, Mary Moore, was also buried on the grounds. Local lore has it that Moore was hung because she "caused animals to do strange things, she grew strange plants and she dressed like a witch."

There are rumors of strange things happening around her grave site. While no one knows exactly when (or if) it actually happened, a story has been told, the Greenways literature said, that "a teenage boy stole the [her] headstone and hid it in his closet. Shortly afterward, he was killed crossing Route 1 and his brother smashed the headstone."

Among the noted war heroes lying beneath the stones on the site is Brevet Maj. Gen. Thomas Swords, a veteran of the Mexican and Civil wars. He served in the Mexican War in 1846, and the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

As Swords’ tombstone was uncov­ered in 1998, research began on the veteran that unearthed that he was born in 1806 in New York and grad­uated from the United States Mili­tary Academy in 1829, the Green­ways literature said. He died in 1886 at the age of 79. Buried with wife Charlotte Cotheal Swords’ family, his tomb is perhaps the most prominent in the graveyard. It stands as a memorial to Edison’s own war hero.

And then there is Revolutionary War history on the site. What is known as "the commons" lies be­hind the burial ground. The place where "local militia drilled" and "animals were allowed to graze" is the oldest public open space in Middlesex County, the Greenways literature said. Across from the commons is what was a tavern at the time of the American Revolu­tion. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were pur­ported to have breakfast there. Many of the troops traversed the land, and the St. James Church there was "used as a barracks by the 42nd Regiment, which was known as the Royal Highland Regiment, and as a hospital during the winter and spring of 1776-1777," the literature added.

To see grounds is to grasp the gravity of local lore that the volun­teers work now annually to keep uncovered.