Constable Hook Cemetery is the name used to refer to two
cemeteries
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many dead people are buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ) implies th ...
on
Constable Hook in
Bayonne, New Jersey
Bayonne ( ) is a City (New Jersey), city in Hudson County, New Jersey, Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Gateway Region on Bergen Neck, a peninsula between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York ...
, the extant Bayonne Constable Hook Cemetery and the no longer existing Van Buskerck Family Burial Ground. Both were founded by members of the van Buskirk family, descendants of the cape's first settler,
Pieter Van Buskirk. In 1906 the
Standard Oil Company
Standard Oil Company was a corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. The ...
purchased the family land to expand their refinery, already the largest in the world at the time. Myths and historical inaccuracies have led to confusion about the two burial grounds.
Bayonne Constable Hook Cemetery
James J. Van Buskirk (1791–1856), of the sixth generation of early Dutch settlers in Bayonne, laid out a cemetery in 1849 during a
cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
epidemic which had struck the area.
In 1854 Van Buskirk wrote a will and mentioned of his land situated at Constable Hook off East 22 Street was to be reserved for the cemetery. Many prominent Bayonne residents were buried there. It was later enclosed by oils tanks of
Tide Water Oil Company.
[
The official name of the cemetery is not known, but it was often referred to in documents as "Hook Cemetery", "Bayonne Cemetery", "Constable Hook" et al. It is currently called "The Bayonne Constable Hook Cemetery".
Today part of the cemetery still exists due to a restoration project of the 1980s. The cemetery is surrounded by property owned by International Matex Tank Terminal,]Moravian Cemetery
The Moravian Cemetery is a cemetery in the New Dorp neighborhood of Staten Island, New York, United States.
Location
Located at 2205 Richmond Road, the Moravian Cemetery is the largest and oldest active cemetery on Staten Island, having opened ...
on Staten Island
Staten Island ( ) is the southernmost of the boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York (state), New York. The borough is separated from the ad ...
. There are approximately 140 headstones
A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The us ...
.[ Information about the graves prior to the 1880s is incomplete.][
]
Van Buskirk Family Burial Ground
The Van Buskirk Family Burial Ground which has also been known as Constable Hook Cemetery, the old Van Buskirk's Cemetery and the Constable Hook Graveyard was founded by Pieter Van Buskirk in about 1736. The cemetery was located on a bluff on the north side of the cape near the homestead and held the remains of early settlers to the region, most of which were disinterred and transferred to other cemeteries. A survey taken in 1903, two or three years before it the cemetery was obliterated, counted 104 headstones.
See also
* List of cemeteries in Hudson County, New Jersey
References
{{reflist
External links
Wikimapia
Bayonne, New Jersey
Cemeteries in Hudson County, New Jersey
1849 establishments in New Jersey