Historical Group Wants Slave Cemetery Preserved

The Bedminster Township Committee needs more information before deciding on a request by the Somerset County Historical Society to preserve the part of the Hillside Avenue property that is a slave cemetery.

The historical society is also asking to place a historic marker on the site of the cemetery, which is on the northern part of the property that once housed the municipal building for six decades, at 130 Hillside Avenue.

“I think it’s a great idea,” township committeewoman Carolyn Freeman said.

The slave cemetery, which dates to about 1800, occupies the northern corner of the 1-acre property near Hillside Avenue which the township still owns, township administrator Judith Sullivan said.

Committeeman Lawrence Jacobs said he wanted to know what type of historic marker would be erected and whether a fence would have to be put around the part of the property where the slave cemetery is supposed to be. He also wanted to know if there would be a parking area.

Committeeman Bernie Payne wondered if the township should put an easement or a deed restriction on the part of the property where the cemetery is located.

Freeman said the township should get input from neighbors before making a decision.  

Committee members said they would like a representative of the Somerset County Historical Society to attend a future township committee meeting to answer questions about the group’s proposal.

For 15 years, the township has been struggling to develop an idea for what to do with the Hillside Avenue property once municipal operations had outgrown the building. The presence of the cemetery put a crimp in the idea of selling it.

The old municipal building, built in 1936 after the township received a $6,000 grant from the Depression-era Public Works Administration, was demolished in 2011. The building, which at one time also housed fire and public works equipment, had been empty for about seven years after municipal offices moved to Miller Lane.