Corner East and High Streets

This ground adjoined the four Presbyterian Churches of early Bound Brook that served the community over a period of more than two hundred years. The last of these was destroyed by the flood and fire of 1896.

The first of the four was a church of logs built in 1688 among the willows on the north bank of the Raritan. That same year it became the charge of a Reverend Mr. Romaine, who came from Scotland to accept it. There it stood until 1725, convenient to those who came by riverboat, on foot, or horseback. In that year it was replaced by a simple frame structure which, in turn, was succeeded by a third church in 1760. The fourth was erected in 1829 on the site of the third, and there it was that the Rev. Romaine was buried in 1742, the first ordained minister to preach in Somerset County. And as sometimes happens with worthy workers, his grave can no longer be identified.

After it was discontinued as a cemetery, during or soon after the Civil War, the ground was purchased by George M. LaMonte and presented by him to the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. With it, that well-known benefactor supplied the funds for its improvement and upkeep, until it became a responsibility of the Borough Government.

Family names carved on many of its finely-dressed brownstones read like a roll call of the founding fathers of this region. Bonney, Field, Brokaw, Hoagland, Smalley, LaTourette, Herbert, Staats, Fisher, Sebring, garretson, Swan and degrees are some we find among them.

Here lie early ministers and members of the church, along with numerous other prominent personalities and first settlers. Also buried here are some forty veterans of the War of the Revolution, three of the War of 1812, one of the Mexican War, and five of the Civil War. Among them is Jonathan Ford Morris, who, during the Revolution, was a Lieutenant of the New Jersey Militia. It was after a local engagement which the Militia had with a British raiding force in 1779 that this young medical student treated its famous leader, the captured and badly-wounded Colonel Simcoe. Without such treatment, that daring British officer might not have lived to become the Royal governor-general of Canada.

A list of the inscriptions found on the stones, compiled a number of years ago when more were intact and legible than now, may be seen among the records kept in the adjoining Memorial Library. In the parlor of the present Presbyterian Church numerous relics are on display.

NOTE: Keys to the yard may be had at either the Memorial Library or the Police Station, both on Hamilton Street.