Speer Burial Ground/DeMott Burial Ground
Vroom Street

The Speer Burial Ground today is owned by Jersey City and located a few blocks away from Journal Square. It was part of the De Mott estate, owned by Dutch settlers, at the border of historic Town of Bergen and is a block away from the Old Bergen Church Cemetery. It is an example of a public graveyard that evolved from a private family resting place to a privately owned and operated cemetery (Sarapin 5).

The L-shaped cemetery of slightly over one acre had reportedly been used by the De Mott family from the 1660s. Although it has been called the "oldest cemetery of European settlers in New Jersey," the earliest surviving grave marker in the cemetery is dated 1756.

The cemetery is named for Abraham Speer, a Jersey City undertaker, bought the cemetery in 1857 and made it a public cemetery by selling burial plots for $16 each. It was used as a potter's field during the nineteenth century. The absence of records makes it impossible to verify who and how many were buried in the cemetery over the years. Head stones indicate the burial of the veterans of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War in the grave yard; its last interments occurred during World
War I.

According to Old Burial Grounds of New Jersey, A Guide by Janice K. Sarapin, "The best guess is that several hundred persons were buried at Speer, with about 160 gravemarkers made from sandstone, marble, and granite. Speer is known to have been used as a potter's field in the 1800s; some estimate thousands of paupers may have been buried there without markers or records" (60). She also reports that the cemetery has "the DeMott family brick vault" among others.

Also known as the "forgotten cemetery," the Speer Burial Ground has long been neglected. A chair-link fence with a gate on Vroom Street was erected in the 1970s to preserve the historic site. A rededication plaque placed at the cemetery on Memorial Day, 1979, indicates that efforts were made to restore the cemetery but the work was not completed.

The other cemeteries in Jersey City are Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City/Harsimus Cemetery, Bayview-New York Bay Cemetery, and Old Bergen Church Cemetery.

Reference:

Sarapin, Janice Kohl. Old Burial Grounds of New Jersey, A Guide. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.