Search For Unmarked Graves Planned At Belleville Church

BELLEVILLE, NJ — An unusual search will take place in Belleville on Thursday when town officials, historical experts and scientists from Rutgers University team up to look for unmarked graves in a local church basement.

According to Belleville officials, the geophysical survey will take place at 8:30 a.m. in the basement of the former Dutch Reformed Church, now called La Senda Antigua, located at 171 Main Street.

Researchers will be using ground-penetrating radar to search the church’s basement, which is believed to be the final resting place for several Chinese workers who helped to build the Central Pacific Railroad and lived in Belleville about 150 years ago, town officials stated.

Some were buried out back, and it is now believed that their resting places were covered over
during one of the church’s expansions, officials said.

Belleville was home to the first Chinese settlement on the East Coast, which is part of the township’s “amazing and diverse history,” Mayor Michael Melham said.

• See related article: Belleville Remembers Chinese History, Transatlantic Railroad

The church, which was founded in 1697, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Reformed Dutch Church of Second River. It was rebuilt in 1725 and again in 1807.

According to Belleville municipal officials, the cemetery behind the church is the final resting place for 66 Revolutionary War soldiers. Many of Belleville’s colonial families are also buried there.

• See related article: Belleville Officials Concerned About Historic Church Cemetery

Michael Perrone, president of the Belleville Historical Society, offered Patch some background information about the cemetery:

“The ‘basement’ of the church is simply part of the original cemetery. The original church was a smaller structure. In order to enlarge the church, they built over part of the cemetery. The graves were not disturbed, they were simply built around and over everyone. The Dutch Reformed did not keep any death/burial records of anyone buried in the cemetery; that would have been a family matter. The church only kept baptism and marriage records since those are church sacraments. We have always known that there were individuals buried in what is now the ‘basement’ of the church, but what is simply a section of the original cemetery.”

Perrone added:

"According to church tradition, the Rev. Geraudus Haughort, the town's best-known colonial figure, was interred in the basement of the church below the area where his pulpit would have been. The church basement is filled with mountains of ash which cover the entire area... the ash is from the coal burning furnace which heated the church. It has been one of the main hopes of the church and historical society to remove the ash and restore the burial area to a proper state. Being able to identify individual grave sites in the basement would be a great and long-overdue project."

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