Exhibiting the transition between colonial graveyards and large garden-style cemeteries like Green-Wood Cemetery, the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery has been a permanent resting ground since 1831 — seven years before Green-Wood. Today, the cemetery has about 90,000 internments. It is the oldest private cemetery in the country.
On October 28, join Untapped New York Insiders for a members-only tour of the Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery. You will join Mandy Edgecombe, licensed Untapped New York guide and trustee of Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, as she takes us on a tour of this early American cemetery. The event is free for Untapped New York Insiders (get your first month free with code JOINUS).
Tour the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery
The Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery holds garden-style features common with the Rural Cemetery Movement such as a well-manicured landscape and family plots with larger monuments, but also individual brownstone grave markers more indicative of colonial graveyards. Founding director Eileen Markenstein turned the cemetery into a hub for cultural and community events after aiding its rescue from abandonment and disrepair in 2008.
On the tour, you will explore the six-acre landscape that is tucked into a canyon in the middle of the bustling city. Later, you will discover the graves of notable figures of Jersey City and American history and peek inside a vaulted tomb that is older than the cemetery and still houses munitions from the War of 1812 and the skeleton of a Viennese count.
As you travel through the cemetery, you will learn about railroad history and hear freight and passenger trains pass by during the tour. You will even hear about the current state of cultural affairs at the cemetery. There is often live music happening there, including a Halloween concert coming soon!
Join us to learn more about the history of the cemetery and Jersey City while enjoying the gorgeous six-acre landscape in the middle of a bustling city!
Tour the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery
Next, check out the hidden New York marble cemetery, one of NYC’s oldest!