Juneteenth 2025: How NJ sleuths track down forgotten African American cemeteries – Bergen Record

Paterson resident David Benjamin wanted to know more about his African American ancestors who once lived across North Jersey. After doing some research, he found that some were buried in what’s now one of the state’s most exclusive addresses.
Skunk Hollow was a community of free Blacks who settled in the 1840s in Alpine, the Bergen County town now known for its multimillion-dollar mansions overlooking the Hudson River. The Skunk Hollow cemetery, just off Palisades Interstate Parkway, is one of the last vestiges of the old settlement near the border with New York State.
“My family had built Skunk Hollow,” Benjamin said. “They lived there for over 100 years. My family is the Jacksons, Browns and Thompsons. There were 13 families — that’s three of them.”
As the nation once again celebrates Juneteenth — the day that since 1866 has commemorated the ending of slavery in the United States — New Jersey residents continue to uncover new information about cemeteries, prominent or hidden, that were the final resting places for freed and enslaved Blacks and their descendants.
Janet Demcoe, who lives in Kendall Park in Middlesex County, is the daughter of genealogists who always loved history. In recent years, Demcoe, who is White, has devoted time to identifying and documenting unrecognized African American cemeteries in the Garden State. It’s part of her volunteer work with WikiTree, a free genealogy site, where she has been creating profiles for the people she has researched.
“Everybody had real lives. Everybody had families. Everybody had the same kind of lives that we did,” said Demcoe, who is retired from a career in health care.
Benjamin, 39, once ran a window cleaning service and is now an investor in start-up companies. He began investigating cemeteries to learn more about ancestors and others who came before him.
Among the locations that caught his attention was the Board Cemetery, which existed at what is now the Wanaque Reservoir in northern Passaic County.
The burial ground was named for the Board family, who settled in the area in the 1730s. The land was acquired in the early 1900s to build the reservoir. A website chronicling the Wanaque Reservoir Historic District states: “The Board Family requested the remains to be reinterred in the Old Pompton Reform Church Cemetery at Pompton. In total, 256 bodies and 37 headstones were removed during a two-year excavation.”
Benjamin believes, based on his research, that not all remains were recovered. Not included were African Americans owned by the Boards and other families as well as freed Blacks who had settled in the area. They remain buried under the Wanaque Reservoir, he said.
“We need our ancestors’ remains removed from the Wanaque Reservoir and all others so that we can lay our ancestors to rest properly, recover our artifacts and clean our water for our state to be healthy,” Benjamin said.
Timothy Eustace, the executive director of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, which owns the reservoir, deferred to former commission engineer Keith Pytlik on the question of any remains buried at the site.
Pytlik worked for the commission for over 30 years until his retirement in 2014. He has been organizing its historical records for the past few years.
When the Wanaque Reservoir was constructed in the 1920s, four cemeteries within its floodway were relocated, with bodies removed and reburied, Pytlik said. He added that it’s possible some of the remains may have been of African Americans, but he was not aware if that was the case.
Pytlik also said that when the nearby Monksville Reservoir was built in the 1980s, a project he worked on, the Monks cemetery at the site was moved to a rustic area near the banks overlooking the Wanaque. Pytlik did not believe African Americans were buried there, but, he said, “I could be mistaken.”
Demcoe, 71, said she is gathering information on unheralded African American burial grounds to “give life” to the people interred there and bring recognition to them so their stories can continue to be told.
A few blocks from her home is the resting place for Thomas Titus Jr., the son of Thomas Titus, a former slave who became the owner of land that takes up much of present-day Kendall Park and South Brunswick Township. The land, in the possession of the Titus family for 53 years, is now a park.
Demcoe also learned that a friend lives near a wooded area in Kendall Park where there’s a small cemetery of African American Civil War soldiers.
“The next thing you know, I’m researching everybody and their uncle,” Demcoe said.
She is the New Jersey team leader for WikiTree’s U.S. Black Heritage Project. Its goal is to create the largest online public database of connected African American families.
That has led her to compile a list of 70 burial sites in New Jersey, with 26 noted as African American cemeteries in WikiTree. She has created profiles of more than 4,000 African Americans over the past eight months. Photos she’s taken to document some of these sites are posted on the Find-A-Grave website.
Tim Adriance, a historic consultant and researcher from Bergenfield, has studied African American burial sites in New Jersey over the years. He advises people who want to know more about a location to research as much as possible.
“Keep searching and searching and searching” online and “do it with multiple keyword search attempts,” Adriance said. “Also, go to the repositories where you might find things. And if it’s local history, in all likelihood, you’re going to probably find it within 25 miles of where you’re looking.”
Adriance had the opportunity a few years ago to assist Benjamin, who came to him seeking information about potential ancestors in the town of Closter in Bergen County.
“His oral tradition was that he went back to William Thompson,” one of the African Americans who founded Skunk Hollow, Adriance said. But the “full family tree of Thompson is not well-researched.”
The free Blacks who settled the Alpine neighborhood in the mid-1800s built the first African American church in Bergen County. By the early 1900s, according to The Palisades Newsletter, a local news site, Skunk Hollow inhabitants had begun to leave the area. They moved south to Closter or north to Sparkill, just across the border in New York.
Adriance advised Benjamin to find two or three primary sources, such as a birth certificate or another document, to find the connection to Thompson. Adriance commended Benjamin for his attempt to find his roots but felt that he was at a disadvantage as he gained knowledge of his ancestors more through oral history than documentation.
“He’s a wonderful young man. … He’s an intelligent young man. I credit him with trying,” Adriance said. “He, like so many other individuals in the African American community, just doesn’t have that kind of resource. And a lot of what you get is oral history from family members. That oral history can get a little sketchy over time. It all needs to be checked and proof-checked.”
Situated in the small Sussex County hamlet of Walpack Township in the northwest part of the Garden State is another nearly forgotten cemetery where the remains of 50 African Americans are believed to be buried, in graves dating back as far as the 1700s.
The Walpack Historical Society hosts events at the site and leads tours to help preserve it from shrinking into obscurity. On one trip in November, two African American residents of Sussex County, Howard Burrell and Scott Paul, visited the cemetery for the first time. They were guided by Sharon Spangenberg and Dan Tassey of the Historical Society.
Burrell, a former Sussex County freeholder and longtime elected official in Vernon, and Paul, a Newton businessman and activist, got to inspect graves, which are marked by fieldstones.
Burrell and Paul promised to help the historical society formally preserve the site. “I definitely appreciated the opportunity” to see the cemetery, Paul said in an interview. “I can see that [the society] cares. It was so powerful to be there.”
“It’s a part of Sussex County history,” Burrell added.
The following is an unofficial New Jersey list compiled by this reporter through research, interviews and information provided by the state.
If you know of other African American burial sites that belong in this listing, please send the information to Ricardo Kaulessar at kaulessar@northjersey.com.
Staff Writer Bruce Scruton contributed to this article.
Ricardo Kaulessar covers race, immigration, and culture for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com
Twitter/X: @ricardokaul