The Meadowlands Commission is honoring Black History Month with a weekly post on this blog. Today the topic is Gethsemane Cemetery in Little Ferry. This series of four posts originally ran in 2009. That’s great thing about history — it never gets old.

   Gethsemane Cemetery is located on an acre on a sandy hill just off Route 46 and Liberty Street.  The photo above is a view of the cemetery’s entrance on Summit Place.

It was set aside in 1860 as a burial ground for African-American residents of nearby Hackensack. The last burial took place in 1924.

The site was entered onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 “because of the significant role it played in the enactment of New Jersey’s early civil rights legislation, as well as containing evidence of West African burial customs,” according to the Bergen County  Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

The county has been doing a major restoration of the cemetery, and it is currently closed to the public. Self-guided tours will be available when the work is completed.

According to the agency, “Fewer than 50 gravestones remain, but the burials of more than  500 people have been documented.

“They include Elizabeth Sutliff Dulfer who was born a slave in the late 1700s, freed in 1822, and died in 1880. She was one of the area’s wealthiest businesswomen and landholders. [Dulfer owned clay beds that supplied clay to potteries from Philadelphia to Boston. Her clay company along the Hackensack River was said to be the second-largest in the nation.]

“Two Civil War veterans, Peter Billings and Silas M. Carpenter, were also buried here.”

More on the cemetery here.

Click “Continue reading …” to learn more about the cemetery’s role in early civil-rights legislation. Continue reading →

Due to hazardous conditions, DeKorte Park is closed Saturday and Sunday.  Nearby Dispsoal Road is also reported to be icy and narrow as a result of the recent storm. Best to stay away.

Jim Wright, who runs the Meadowlands Nature Blog for the New Jersey Mead0owlands Commission, also writes a twice-monthly column for the South Bergenite. His latest is on the Snowy Owls at DeKorte Park, and features photos by Mike Girone:

Earlier this month, DeKorte Park experienced an unprecedented event. Four — count ‘em, four — Snowy Owls flew out onto the ice for visitors to enjoy.

Few New Jerseyans have ever seen a Snowy Owl, let alone four, for one simple reason.  Snowy Owls fly south from the Arctic in the winter only occasionally in search of food, and when they do, they gravitate toward areas where they are difficult to see. They are used to barren tundra, where trees are far and few between,  and they tend to seek out similar habitat when they fly south.

This winter has been a record-setting season for Snowy Owls in the United States — one was even seen in Bermuda — and the Meadowlands’  iced-over mudflats and closed landfills are providing a wonderful home away from home for them.

Another big attraction: “There is plenty of food in the Meadowlands for them to prey on,” says NJMC Naturalist Mike Newhouse. “We know they like to eat waterfowl and animals like mice and rabbits, which are found in abundance here.” Continue reading →

a conversation between two birds on a golf course from john dunstan on Vimeo.

Don Torino passed along this cool video from Jersey City. (Thanks, Don!)

Because of the bad weather, DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst is closed on Thursday, Feb. 13.

The bird flying near Disposal Road is a Snow Bunting. It was attacked moments later by a Gray Ghost (male Northern Harrier).  Thanks to Louis Balboa for the photo.

Photo of Gray Ghost with Snow Bunting prey, by Walt Staab, follows. (Thanks, Walt!)  (Not for squeamish!) Continue reading →

Ray Duffy reports seeing two pairs of Common Ravens along Chubb Avenue in Lyndhurst  in what might have been a territorial dispute.

(Thanks, Ray!)

This Lincoln Sparrow shot courtesy of Dennis Cheeseman. We are thinking the top hat might not be real.

The Camden Courier-Post had a nice story on the Meadowlands in Sunday’s editions.

Here’s the beginning:

Last Sunday, Super Bowl XLVIII drew thousands to MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands.

What fans did not see is the rest of the Meadowlands, a place teeming with environmental activities, from a canoe trip to a nature walk, bird-watching to star gazing. An ecotourism touchdown, if you will.

“There is so much more than the sports complex,” said Brian Aberback, spokesperson for the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. “We like to say we are in the middle of nowhere and the middle of everything.”

The link is here.

Photo by Marie Longo

Don Torino’s latest column for wildnewjersey.tv is about waiting for spring to arrive.

Here’s a sample:

I am told that Spring is out there somewhere. I have heard that it is just one more turn of the page on the calendar, the sight of the return of the Red-winged Blackbirds to the marshes or maybe even just the anticipation of a few warm days in March that we, even though very disbelievingly, feel like Spring truly lies in our future.

Maybe it will be the first Robins feeding on your backyard Hollies or the visions of an Oriole weaving its intricate nest on a willow tree or the faith that the columbines and Milkweeds lie dormant waiting for the snow to melt and finally warm the ground that keeps us looking out our windows and dreaming of Spring’s arrival.

Link is here.