ERMA – The final resting place of Cape May and Lower Township’s first African American families and Black Civil War soldiers received a sprucing up March 21 from Boy Scout Troop 87 based at Tabernacle United Methodist Church in Lower Township.
Lower Township Councilman Thomas Conrad, who is assistant scoutmaster, said Union Bethel Cemetery had the graves of African American soldiers dating back to the mid 1800s and other Civil War veterans who died later. The cemetery was once the site of the Union Bethel Church and the first Black settlement in the south county.
They are family plots from the Turner family which was the head of a family tree of many African American families in the Cape May area. Members of the Vance, Humphries and Hastings families are also buried there under tall trees.
Senior Patrol Leader Ray Hewitt, an eighth grade student at the Richard M. Teitelman School, led the clean up along with Scoutmaster David Dunlap, Assistant Scoutmaster Mike Holden and Conrad.
Hewitt said scouts were raking the path to the cemetery that sits back a few hundred feet from Tabernacle Road, picking up branches, sticks, litter and leaves around headstones.
Conrad said no one is responsible for the upkeep of the cemetery of which ownership is unclear. The township has been doing some maintenance such as removing dead trees and large limbs.
“We are always looking for service projects, that is one of the main functions of the boyscouts…” said Dunlap.
The scouts worked in groups of two or three scouring the property on a 35 degree morning on the second day of spring.
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