There's a very good chance that a onetime Somerset County highway commissioner lies buried under one of Warren's busiest roads. According to historian George Bebbington, an entire family cemetery may have been obliterated when the road was constructed. The road is Mountain Boulevard Extension, the family, Cox, and the highway commissioner, Philip Cox, one of Warren's earliest inhabitants. Bebbington's hunt for the lost Cox cemetery began with two tombstone inscriptions provided by Dottie Stratford of the N.J. Genealogical Society. Recorded by Charles Gardner in October l947, the inscriptions themselves are mundane: "Philup Cox, July ye 12, l736" and "In memory of Philip Cox who died Sept 19 1785 aged 80 years." Gardner's comments, however, were what set Bebbington on the trail. The 1736 stone, said Gardner, was on the "farm of Mr. Thomas at Springdale, on north side of road from Warrenville to Martinsville, in use as part of a walk by kitchen door...." And Philip Cox's stone, wrote Gardner, was on the "farm of a Mr. Thomas, on north side of road from Warrenville to Martinsville, at Springdale, in Warren township, Somerset County, in green patch in a ploughed field. No other stone in patch.... Stone is broken and scaling off, but pieces still there." Where was the Thomas farm, where were the stones originally, where are they now and were they part of a larger family cemetery? George Bebbington began his hunt. Mrs. Hazel Mundy and Donald Freiday, both long-time area residents, told Bebbington they remembered the stones from their younger years. Freiday recalled that the two stones originally stood back to back. Both felt the grave sites were either on the north bank of Mountain Boulevard Extension or more likely under the road itself. A newspaper story several years ago reported that the County road dept. had uncovered a grave stone while clearing ditches on Washington Valley Road "near the firehouse." Bebbington's search for the stone, or for anyone at the department who remembered the incident, proved fruitless. Bebbington was more convinced than ever that an old Cox family cemetery lay near the intersection of the Extension and l55 Washington Valley Rd., especially as older residents who grew up in the area searched their memories. Gus Mobus said he believed that the property at the road intersection (now occupied by a fire wood dealer) was where the Thomas family lived at one time. Herb Lewis, who formerly owned a piece of the property, confirmed that much of the land in that area had once been owned by a Cox family. Others remembered Otto Thomas as the first farmer in Warren to plant sugar beets for cattle feed. Gardner himself once told the story of a farmer ploughing his field around the last standing stone of the Cox cemetery. Mrs. Mundy recalled circling her riding horse around it. Another report had it that after one of the Cox graves was dug up many years ago, a concerned resident gathered the scattered bones and stored them "in a box in the barn." Both Frank Salvato and Gus Mobus told Bebbington that at one time there were more than two graves there and Joseph Glazner, who grew up in the area, was positive the graves were under the road. When Mountain Boulevard Extension was cut through in l973, there were no protests that a family cemetery would be disturbed, probably, says Bebbington, because all exisiting tombstones had been removed and the cemetery's exact location forgotten. One person Bebbington spoke to did remember that at a hearing regarding the road extension, someone raised the question of graves only to be told there were no "human" remains there, just the bones of the former owner's favorite horse -- a story, Bebbington has been told, that raised a knowing "horse laugh" at the old Warrenville Tavern. The Warren Township Historical Society attempted to save the Herlich House, a Colonial-era structure that stood in the path of the proposed Mountain Blvd. Extension. Members then had no knowledge of the Cox cemetery, said Bebbington. The Herlich House, whose history the Society traced back to Adam Jobs, who died in l798, was once the home, after l850, of William M. Drake, "a Jeffersonian and a Democrat," who was the founder and publisher of both the Plainfield and Somerville Gazette. Efforts to save the Herlich house were fruitless and both it and, now claims Bebbington, the old Cox cemetery were destroyed to build the road. "There was an overwhelming feeling among many of us back in l973," says Bebbington, "that the County was to build Mountain Blvd. Extension through the Herlich property regardless of any obstacles, historical or otherwise, that stood in its way. None of our protests met with any success, and we were dishearted by officialdom's seeming lack of concern about the destruction they planned. The Herlich house and Warrenville Tavern comprised the very center of old Warrenville; they were historic, certainly worth saving, yet we were frustrated at every turn." Bebbington recalls with sadness and a touch of anger the battle to save old Warren from the bulldozer and remembers the words of the Herlich family attorney after the battle was lost: "The Freeholders," he said, "want that road so they can give their buddies fat contracts." Bebbington's Cox family research now reveals that Mountain Blvd. Extension may have destroyed more than a historic house. A family cemetery dating from pre-Revolutionary War days was also obliterated in the name of progress. "Since this ground has been so greatly disturbed," says Bebbington, "it will be a problem to locate any remaining graves even with modern scientific equipment. However, all future road repairs or widening in the area should be done only under the supervision of a qualified archeological historian. Ironically, highway commissioner Cox is apparently entombed under a County road." |