Piscatawaytown, New Jersey

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Piscatawaytown is the oldest neighborhood in Edison, Middlesex County, New Jersey. It started in the 1660s as the original village of what was then the area of Piscataway. The community grew around St. James Church, the Piscatawaytown Burial Ground, and the Piscatawaytown Common near the intersection of Plainfield and Woodbridge Avenues.

The area was home to the Raritan, groups of the Lenape people who lived near the Raritan River and its bay. It was settled by New Englanders in the 17th century. In 1666, the first Governor of the Province of New Jersey, Philip Carteret, granted 12 settlers from Massachusetts a large tract of land that would become the townships of Piscataway and Woodbridge. More settlers from the Piscataqua region (near New Hampshire and Maine) arrived, helping to bring the name Piscataway to the area. Other nearby settlements included Quibbletown and Raritan Landing.

On March 17, 1870, parts of Piscataway and Woodbridge were combined to form Raritan Township, which was later renamed Edison in the 1950s.

A burial ground and a town common were granted on March 5, 1695. Saint James Church began in 1704, with the original structure built in 1724; the current church building dates to 1836. The area saw military activity during the Revolutionary War, including the Forage War in 1776 and 1777. The British used St. James Church as barracks and a hospital from December 1776 to June 1777. A tornado in June 1835 damaged many gravestones and the church.

The Piscatawaytown Burial Ground is one of Middlesex County’s oldest cemeteries and is maintained by the township. People were buried there even before the 1695 land grant, with the oldest readable gravestone dating to 1693 for the Hoopar brothers, who died from mushroom poisoning. Many veterans are buried there, including British soldiers from the Revolutionary War in a common grave in 1777. The highest-ranking veteran buried there is Brevet Major General Thomas Swords (who served in the Mexican War and Civil War), buried in 1886. A 2021 ground-penetrating radar survey found 98 graves in the southwest corner, designated as the colored burial ground, of which 11 have been identified. By 2015, 1,815 burials had been identified in total, with 1,494 graves marked by stones.