Newton Cemetery is a cemetery in Newton, in Sussex County, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1860, the 24.05 acres (9.73 ha) cemetery is in current use and is owned and operated by the Newton Cemetery Company.[1]
The Newton Cemetery Company was incorporated on 22 March 1860 by an act of the New Jersey state legislature.[3] It named seven men as "corporators", including Michael B. Titman, Moses W. Northrup, attorney Daniel S. Anderson, Samuel Cassady, the Reverend Nathaniel Pettit (of Christ Church, Newton), Thomas N. McCarter, and Whitfield S. Johnson. By 1866, the corporators had raised funds—approximately $16,000—to purchase a 26 acres (11 ha) tract of land from the heirs of Aaron Peck and open for burials. According to James P. Snell, the first interment was for Joseph A. Linn, who was buried in August 1867.[3] Five years later, in 1872, a local newspaper reported that "the number of interments is about 340--a large majority of which were re-interments from other places".[2]
Burial options at Newton Cemetery include interment in the cemetery's Mausoleum Chapel, erected in 1991.[4]
Notable burials
The grave marker for three children lost in caverns below Newton in 1909
In 1909, three local children were lost in the underground limestone caverns underneath the town of Newton. An entrance to these caves (now sealed) was located in the woods near the cemetery. Currently, a marker bearing the names of these three children, James W., Margaret, and J. Howard Lewis, is mounted in the face of the rock-outcropping approximately fifty-yards into the woods on the cemetery property. The magazine Weird NJ recounts that the daughter, Margaret found her way into the cave and got lost. Her two brothers went in to find her and also got lost.[7] This tale is merely folklore as the family of James W. Lewis, his wife Margaret Lewis and their adoptive son James Howard Lewis can be found in the Newton New Jersey 1895 census, where James W. and Margaret Lewis are without a doubt listed as adults. Further research reveals a marriage record for them in 1859, as well as J. Howard Lewis death records and obituary in 1899 and Margaret's 1906 death and obituary. Newton Cemetery is largely re-interred plots, Margaret and J. Howard were initially buried in Deckertown Union Cemetery in Wantage, Sussex, New Jersey and re-interred here by James W. Lewis in 1909. [8][9]
Gallery
Looking south toward Henry C. Kelsey mausoleum, May 2013
Looking north, December 2011
Gravestone for industrialist and philanthropist Henry W. Merriam (1828-1900) and wife, Frances (1839-1897)
Gravestone for Mark McGarrity (aka Bartholomew Gill), crime fiction writer
Mausoleum for Henry C. Kelsey, former New Jersey Secretary of State, leader of "Kelsey Ring"
References
^Town of Newton (New Jersey), Office of the Tax Assessor, "Tax Records for Block 18.01, Lot 1". Confirmed through Assessment Records Search and Harold E. Pellow & Associates, Inc., Newton Tax Map (Revised February 2012), Sheet 18. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
^ abJames P. Snell (compiler), History of Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881), 276.
