The Eckers of Woodland Cemetery, Newark, NJ.
In mid-February, 2008, I visited the Woodland Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey. A number of death certificates I found in Trenton indicated that this was the resting place of several Eckers, most of whom I could not identify. It was not difficult to find the cemetery on a map, and Google quickly gave me the phone number of its current management company. The person on the phone confirmed that a number of Eckers were buried there and promptly sent me the maps and copies of the grave cards which I have posted elsewhere on the site. As I visited other Newark cemeteries first, I was warned that the cemetery was "unsafe." Nonetheless, armed with my GPS unit on a cold early morning, I visited the cemetery. I already knew from the Web that I would not find the cemetery to be in good shape. Even so, I was unprepared for what I found. The cemetery had been extensively vandalized. Many, perhaps most of the gravestones had been overturned, broken, or were apparently missing. The cemetery was once probably very beautiful. Now, garments, bottles, and other garbage littered it. Trees that had been broken in months or years past were still fallen across graves. I confess to you there were tears in my eyes. Photographs are available here.
There were no signs identifying the lanes, and only a few had-to-find stones marking sections of the cemetery. The majority of Ecker gravesites were in two parts of a cemetery: the L and N sections and I was able to figure out where these were. In Section L, I was both pleased and sad to find the major Ecker family plot. A marker was still identifiable although the central obelisk was partly missing. Photographs are posted. I could not find the Ecker plot in Section N although I may not have been focused on the right place. I explored the cemetery for some three hours and could identify nothing else. I did not know where to look for the individual graves.
Nonetheless, some good came from this visit and there is some hope. I discovered a network of volunteers that is attempting to reconstruct the history and families in the cemetery. The original cemetery records are preserved in the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark. These Friends of Woodland Cemetery have also been assembling information provided by relatives of the deceased. When I contacted them, one of the organization's leaders promptly sent me a spreadsheet with the names of 28 Eckers and other individuals buried with them. It was clear that the volunteers had already collected information from obituaries and death certificates. Indeed, to help me, they obtained additional death certificates of Eckers that I did not yet have. This group organizes a yearly supervised visit to the cemetery permitting them to further care for and learn from the cemetery. I was impressed by, and grateful for what they are doing. With the information the group sent me and with what I already knew, I was able to identify the family relationships of virtually all the Eckers in Woodland.
Here is what I found.
There are members of at least three of the five major Ecker family lines in Woodland Cemetery. Most are from the family of Johann Jacob who is buried there. There is a handful from the family of Christian Phillip including his second wife Mary, who was herself the sister of Hannah Squire Ecker. I did not anticipate, but was moved to find the graves of three children of my Great-Great Grandparents, William and Hannah. I would never have known they were there had not the cemetery records named the parents. It is likely we would nevereven have otherwise learned their names. Unfortunately, at this point, I do not know where in the Cemetery their graves are located.
I did not identify anyone from the family of Frederick Ecker. Frederick was initially buried in the military section of nearby Fairmont Cemetery, as was his brother Abraham William. Their wives and some of their children are also buried in Fairmont. Had not the two brothers been Civil War veterans, I suspect they would have been interred with the rest of their family in Woodland. Some of the Eckers became Roman Catholics and I am told to look for them in the adjacent Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Newark. I was not able to do so this trip although I did visit Holy Sepulcher where I found the grave of my Great-Grandmother Edith Agnes (Beaver) Ecker, and her mother Catharine Burke. (No marker was present yet at their gravesite.)
At the time I was visited the cemetery I did not know that the brother’s sister, Regina Catharina Ecker came to America with them; nor did I know of her marriage to George Christian Oese (Öse). It is quite possible that some of her family is interred with the Eckers. Further inquiries are in order.
Attached to this summary are the following documents. I include a map to show the location of Woodland, Fairmont, and Holy Sepulcher Cemeteries in Newark, and the location of the two identified sections in Woodland I could find. I also present to you a .pdf document containing the grave cards and maps that the management company sent me. I added to these a few maps that I stole (sorry) from elsewhere on the web. Also attached is a trimmed down html database table provided to me by the Friends. (A pdf version of the simplified table and the full Excel file are also available.) To the spreadsheets, I added a column that describes the interrelatedness of those family members I could identify. It gave me a good feeling to be able to do this.
The Friends connected me with an individual who had made an inquiry sometime earlier. This turned out to be a distant relative of Mabel E. Ecker Gracie who is buried with her parents in Section N. Mabel had a daughter, also named Mabel (photo) whose potential children might still be around. An undated contact name on the grave card was Mrs. Kenneth Briden of Mendham, NJ. One can only hope that bottles like this note thrown upon the world’s oceans will someday be found.
Closing thoughts.
I think I have lived a fortunate life. Probably like the rest of you who live in this modern world, I wonder what life was like for our ancestors. Surely there were the joys of love and satisfaction of accomplishment. There were the blessings that children bring. I would like to think for them that the glass was more than half full. Yet in so many ways, things must have been more difficult for the Eckers of Woodland than I would wish to contemplate. Surely the problems that caused them to leave their homeland and family must have been extraordinary difficult. Their lives were short by our standards, and they died of infectious diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia that are treatable now. They suffered from substantial cardiovascular disease in an era when there was not even treatment for hypertension. They died in childbirth. In one cruel winter of 1884, Charles Frederick and Julia M. Ecker lost all three of their children ages 1, 3, and 8, from infectious disease.
As I look through the records of this family I see relationships that are the same as those we have among us today. There is much evidence they lived near each other, sheltered each other, stood by each other, were godparents to each other’s children, witnesses at their weddings, and also at their funerals. As a family, they began their lives in this new country and prepared the way for us. As we speak their names in the twenty-first century; for some probably for the first time aloud in more than a century; I hope you will help me thank them with all our hearts.
