Hedy Grant wanted to know more about the old house in New Milford that she’s lived in for 36 years. More about the funky abode with the low-slung ceilings, the moss-covered patio and the ancient brook that swerves through the backyard in an area of town long ago known as The Flatts.
So she hit the deed vault at the Bergen County Hall of Records, digging deep to trace the property lines that have shifted over time. Four years later, the New Milford councilwoman still doesn’t know when her house was built, but believes she has discovered something that is much more important.
Working with a local historian, Peggy W. Norris, Grant uncovered evidence that an African-American burial ground once occupied the grounds of the Bertrand F. Gibbs Elementary School. The evidence: a single reference to a “colored Burying ground” in a handwritten deed dated Jan. 23, 1883 she found while researching her property.
“This is much more interesting and worthwhile,” Grant said of her find. “Finding out how old my house is would satisfy my personal curiosity, but I think finding an old African-American burial ground should be a matter of celebration, for the board of education, for Bergen County, and the whole State of New Jersey.”
Grant presented her findings to the New Milford Board of Education earlier this week, and urged them to petition the Bergen County Historical Society to place a marker at the school. Generations of school children have played on the site, which is in the back of the school along a grassy strip next to the softball field.
School board president Tonia Andrews said trustees will take up the matter at their next meeting in January. “I’m personally very excited,” she said, adding that the discovery was a benefit to everyone, not just New Milford residents.
Schools Superintendent Danielle M. Shanley said the children at the K to 5 school haven’t been told yet, but it will be a great learning opportunity. “We are a tiny little town that is very rich in history,” Shanley said, referring to Gen. George Washington’s famous retreat across the Hackensack River at New Bridge Landing in November of 1776 with the British army in hot pursuit. “So here we go again.”
But verification will require more research. The only reference to the burial ground is the deed.
Grant had a team of student researchers from Rutgers University do a radar scan of the ground, but the results were inconclusive, she said.
Still, deeds are generally considered to be reliable primary source documents for historical research. Deeds would have little value in resolving property disputes if the markers were unreliable.
Norris said she could find no listing of the cemetery elsewhere, and it’s unlikely the graves were marked. “Who knows when it disappeared?” she said.
Norris said the school was built in the 1950s. “So, by that time, they probably no longer knew that the graveyard was there,” she said.
It seems the Gibbs site, like much of African-American history, lies buried. Slavery was commonplace in the North as well as the South during colonial times; it is estimated that slaves accounted for 20% of Bergen County’s population at the time of the American Revolution.
New Jersey was among the last states in the North to ban slavery when it adopted legislation in 1804. But even then, the emancipation of slaves was gradual; it wasn’t until 1866 that the last slaves in New Jersey went free.
Burial grounds were often segregated and lost to history. About 50 Black burial grounds have been identified around the state, among them, the Matlack Family Burial Ground in Cherry Hill, the Nixon Cemetery in the Quakertown section of Franklin Township in Hunterdon County, and the tiny Vreeland Cemetery in Edgewater. About 10 years ago, a Black burial ground was discovered near the campus of Ramapo College in Mahwah.
Grant found the deed with the reference to the burial ground in 2019 and wanted to find out more. A Montclair State University professor put her in touch with Norris, an experienced genealogist from Ridgewood. The two used old maps, then fed data from a bunch of deeds into a computer software program and identified the location of the burial ground as the Gibbs school.
“I think it’s important to commemorate it, to honor those who people who may well have been enslaved at the time and were forgotten,” Grant said. “It’s an important for us to remember our history for educational purposes, and as a cautionary tale.”
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Richard Cowen may be reached at rcowen@njadvancemedia.com.
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