Cemeteries as Roadside Attractions

South Jersey (especially along Route 9) is unparalleled for roadside attractions. Giant fiberglass cartoon figures, fanciful soft serve ice cream stands, diners, pyramids made of hubcaps, the list goes on. The list now, for me, includes small, pocket-sized cemeteries, like the one above, along Route 9 in Cape May Court House, New Jersey. 

In the summer of 2024, I was researching forgotten cemeteries for my book, “Abandoned Cemeteries of Philadelphia and its Environs” (expected publication in late 2025, on Fonthill). South Jersey, being in the general area of Philly, was on my radar. I happened to be in Cape May, so why not check out the local cemeteries? 

On my drive back north to Philly on Route 9, I noticed some small burial grounds pop up on my phone map. They were right along the highway. I stopped at two of them, plots of land about twenty feet wide, and fifteen feet deep, with maybe as many as ten old headstones standing at attention. The grounds were well taken care of.

Robert Morris in Holmes Family Cemetery

No doubt, these were family plots that had been on private property at one time. A few such burial grounds still exist in Philadelphia, e.g. the DeBenneville (est. 1758) and Vandegrift (est. 1775) cemeteries on North Broad Street and Bristol Pike, respectively, but New Jersey has many more. Why? Certainly south Jersey is more rural, but there must be other reasons why most private family cemeteries in Philadelphia were moved or built over. Chances are that heavy industrialization and rapid population growth in Philadelphia in the mid to late 1800s contributed to the eradication of small family cemeteries.

One of the topics I cover in my book is the disappearance of such small family burial grounds. Large farms and estates dwindled in size as parcels of land were sold off throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. These family burial grounds either disappeared, were built over, or the graves were moved. Some still exist, providing us with interesting slices of history. 

Holmes Family Cemetery along Route 9, Cape May Court House, NJ

A cemetery I stopped at on Route 9 in Cape May Court House (that’s the name of the actual town) was a place that my cellphone map app called the Holmes Family Cemetery. Most of the gravestones had a death date in the early 1800s. Someone had placed small American flags on the veterans’ stones, men who had fought in the Revolutionary War. But wait, there was no Battle of Cape May, right? According to the book, Cape May County Story (Avalon Publishing, 1975) by Boyer and Cunningham:

“New Jersey became the foremost state in resisting British tyranny in January of 1775 when the Assembly voted to present grievances to the King. Jonathan Hand and Eli Elrdidge represented Cape May County at that meeting. No colony was more deeply involved in the Revolution than New Jersey. It was a natural passageway between New York and Philadelphia and was always in a condition of siege. Benjamin Franklin likened it to a barrel, open at both ends. It had been called the “Corridor State” and the “Cockpit of the Revolution” by some, and others referred to this state as the “Pathway to Freedom.”

American men who fought in the famous New Jersey battles of Monmouth, Trenton, Red Bank, and Princeton, had to come from somewhere. Many came from south Jersey, some of whom are probably buried in the Holmes Family Burial Ground. Excluding Quakers (conscientious objectors) and Tories (loyal to the King), the above noted historians tell us that “49 percent of the male population in the state bore arms and New Jersey contributed one eighth of the total men from all the colonies that fought in the war.”

The Holmes Family Cemetery was distinctive in that every headstone had daddy-long-legs spiders on them! Odd. What was even odder was all the other types of spiders dangling from the pine trees on web strands above my head. 

About a mile up the road was a rather peculiar small cemetery in that it appeared to be in someone’s front yard. Curious, I parked across the busy street and walked up to the house, which had a pickup truck parked in the driveway. I knocked on the door. A man about 45 years old appeared. I told him I was researching a book on abandoned cemeteries and asked if he knew the story behind the gravestones in his front yard. My cellphone app called this the Hand Family Burial Ground. Perhaps the Jonathan Hand (1728 – 1789) mentioned in the passage above was a member of this family, and may be resting below one of the nameless, worn stones in this plot.          

The homeowner asked me to wait while he put his shoes on. He came outside carrying a paperback book. He told me that when he bought the house about twenty years ago, it was explained to him that he did not own that small portion of land in his front yard. It was owned by the state of New Jersey. When Route 9, a state-owned highway, was built, all the small burial grounds along it were purchased by the state. The state maintains them. 

Roadside view of Craig's property, Hand Family Cemetery in foreground

Craig's front yard looking toward Route 9, with Hand Family Cemetery near road

The owner, Craig, told me a rather comical story. He said that shortly after he bought the house, he woke up one morning to a lot of activity near the street. Cars were pulling up, people getting out and gathering in the cemetery. Suddenly, shots rang out and he hit the deck! He peeked through one of his windows and realized that a twenty-one gun salute had just occurred. It was Memorial Day and people were placing flags on the graves!

As I thanked him and was turning to leave, he held out the paperback as a gift. He said “My mother was a historian and co-authored this book. You can have it.” The book is called Cape May County Story, the very book I quoted above. And yes, it does mention cemeteries. 

Sarah Somers (1770 - 1796)

It is interesting to see familiar surnames on the stones in these old cemeteries. Sarah Somers (1770 - 1796) and Sarah Hand (1741 – 1826), both buried in the Hand plot, each have surnames that should be familiar to beachgoers who frequent the Jersey shore. Sarah Somers and her husband, Constant Somers, may be related in some way to nearby Somers Point, a south Jersey beach town. Sarah Hand along with her husband Jesse Hand, Esq., may have been related to the still current and popular shore business, Hand’s Department Store on Jersey's Long Beach Island.

Sarah Hand (1741 – 1826)

The two small cemeteries I stopped at had been private family burial grounds at the edges of farms. As the farms were diced up and sold as small packets of land for development as residential properties, the burial grounds were kept intact. There is another small cemetery on the grounds of the Cape May Zoo, but I could not find that one. They may all have been forgotten by the public, as they are hidden in plain sight, but they have, thankfully, been saved from oblivion by the state of New Jersey. They may not be as eye-catching as a giant fiberglass cow, but they will outlast most of Jersey's other roadside attractions.

My Mother and the Sea

This week’s Cemetery Traveler post was guest written by my friend, Cynthia Solem. - Ed Snyder 

My Mother and the Sea

My mother, Violet, was born in Philadelphia. On her mother’s side of the family, she was a seventh generation Philadelphian, as she was descended from the Krefelders, the founders of Germantown. Her father was the son and grandson of German immigrants to Pennsylvania.

Photo below:  Alice Marker Robinson and children:  Alyce, Violet, and Ray, Wildwood, New Jersey(?), Circa 1933. (Family archives)

Alice Robinson and children, c. 1933

Violet’s father, like his father, worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. My mother, along with her two siblings, spent her early childhood in South Philly, in a neighborhood for shipyard workers. During the Depression, this was an excellent job to have, as Grandpa had a steady income. One of my grandmother’s relatives had a beach house at Wildwood, New Jersey, and, when he was about to lose it for unpaid taxes, my grandparents bought it. For the next several years, my mother’s favorite place was Wildwood in the summer. My grandmother, as befitting her Pennsylvania Dutch origins, was a neatnik, but she relaxed the rules at the beach. My mother and her sister and brother were given a lot of freedom to go to the beach and the Boardwalk. As a teenager, my mother became friends with several lifeguards, and, after they got off duty, they would all go out to swim with the dolphins.  For my mother, the ocean always symbolized freedom.

World War II intervened and spoiled this lovely family time. My mother (who had by this time changed her name to the more-modern Vicki) joined the Cadet Nurse Corps, and studied at Presbyterian Hospital to get her nursing degree. My uncle joined the Navy. Aunt Alyce took a job as personal secretary to the head of a department store. (Strawbridge and Clothier’s) but still found time to attend USO dances. At one dance, she met two nice Army sergeants from Wisconsin who were about to be shipped off to North Africa. She invited them home for Thanksgiving dinner. My mother was studying for exams, but Alyce was very persuasive and said it was her patriotic duty to take these young men, who might die, after all, on a tour of the City of Brotherly Love. One of the young men, Bob, was apparently quite smitten by Vicki, who had just turned eighteen. He asked if he could write her, and she agreed.

Bob was sent to North Africa, contracted malaria, was part of the invasion of Sicily, was sent to a hospital in England to recover, then was sent to Omaha Beach during D-Day. He had a relapse, and then was sent back to hospitals in New Jersey, Florida, and Colorado. Bob was a good letter writer, and apparently a persuasive man because, even though he didn’t really know her, he eventually got my mother to promise to marry him and move to, as she put it, “the wilds of Wisconsin."  My mother, a big city girl, was quite out of place in the small Wisconsin town where they lived first with my father’s parents and then in a trailer park for returning GIs on the University of Wisconsin‘s Camp Randall Field.

My brother was born and my mother took the baby to meet his Pennsylvania relatives. My Philadelphia grandfather was ecstatic about having a grandson, but he didn’t have long to enjoy him because Grandpa died shortly after, at 54, of a massive heart attack.

My grandmother sold the beach cottage and the family home and moved to Wisconsin to live with us.

Every summer, Grandmom went to Ocean City, to visit my uncle and his family, and to Wildwood. She faithfully sent her Midwestern grandchildren salt water taffy.  Our family joined her a number of times and my brother and I learned to body surf and love the sea, just as our mother did.

My father died young, so my mother was widowed at forty-two. I asked her if she wanted to move back to the East Coast, but she had a family, a job, and friends in Wisconsin. As she got older, she was adamant that she did not want to be buried with my dad and the rest of his family at the family grave in Spring Green, Wisconsin. “I want you to scatter my ashes off the shore at Cape May,” she said.

Though my mother lived another forty-six years, it was still a shock when she died last year. Though she hadn’t left any written instructions, my brother and I both knew what her wishes were.

 

Rainbow over Cape May, September 10, 2015 (Photo courtesy of Martha Kendall)

Last summer, our families and two of my cousins and their spouses all gathered at Miss Chris Fishing Center in Cape May. My mother’s ashes were in a cardboard tube decorated with sunflowers. My son’s fiancée had brought a bouquet of flowers. To our surprise, the boat slowed right outside the Boardwalk at Wildwood and the captain told us it was time to begin the ceremony. It was a lovely day and laughing gulls were flying above the boat. My brother tossed the ashes, in their container, off the stern. Then each of us took a flower, made a blessing, and placed the flower in the water. We laughed, cried, and hugged.

Laughing Gull, Wildwood New Jersey, August, 2014 (Cynthia Solem)

My mother, like her mother, was a bird lover. She was particularly fond of cardinals. As our boat turned and headed back to Cape May, we were escorted by one of the laughing gulls.

“I’ve been noticing the birds a lot lately,” one of my sons confided to me. “I thought that maybe Grandma would want a cardinal to be with her, but it’s fitting that a gull has decided to come back with us.”

We live on the other coast, near another Boardwalk, but, when I smell the salt air, and see the gulls and pelicans soaring over Monterey Bay, I cannot help but think that we all came from the ocean. That’s where my mother has returned. ______________________________________________

Author: Cynthia Solem, Santa Cruz, California

Cynthia has lived on the Pacific Coast for over forty years. She has recently retired after teaching English and English as a Second Language at community colleges and universities in the Bay Area and the Monterey Bay area.