Enslaved Cemetery, Mahwah
Site Brief:
Founded: unknown, late 1700's/early 1800's
Location: Mahwah, NJ
Additional name(s): N/A
Affiliate group(s):
Mahwah Museum
History:
Nestled among the trees along the Ramapo River, this cemetery is roughly 40 x 100 foot swath of sacred ground, bordered with a low wall of stones, abandoned, yet still "tended." Local tradition states that this land was used as an enslaved cemetery. Bischoff and Kahn's 1979 book "History of Mahwah" (p. 413) lists these among the enslaver families in the area: Bogert, Bartholf, Cough, Terhune, Van Allen, Hopper, Maysinger, Boggs, Lydecker, Ackerman, Vanderbeek, Fell, Garrison, Smith, Westervelt, Haring, and Ryerson.
We seek to honor those whose names and stories have been lost. Buried here are those who were black enslaved, freedmen, and workers of the 1700s-1800s. The back area is assumed to be the burial site of enslaved or freedmen buried without markers. Those buried here were most likely of Afro-Dutch and possibly Ramapough Indian descent.
The marked graves include:
- Joseph Harrison,1850
- 3 children, ages 2, 3, 10 of York & Jane Harrison, a known freed family of the 1800’s
- Samuel Jennings, who worked for the Havemeyer family as a freedman in the 1800s. (Bischoff and Kahn (p.144) states: "The Jennings and some mountain people worked for Mountain Side (Farm)." The Jennings stone has a 20th century appearance and could possibly be a replacement.)
