October 29, 2012: Hurricane Sandy

Trees felled by Hurricane Sandy
at Riverview Cemetery

One year ago today, October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy passed by Trenton, felling many trees and toppling or damaging numerous monuments here at Riverview Cemetery.

The storm made its trek up the Eastern Seaboard, making landfall south of Atlantic City and devastating the Jersey Shore. The effects of the storm were felt 500 miles from the storm's center, with Trenton reporting a record-setting barometric pressure low of 958 mb, and the accompanying heavy rains and strong winds easily felled trees that were still in full leaf.

Friends’ Plot and the Oldest Extant Gravemarkers

Three ledgers: an unknown burial,
John Bainbridge (1657-1732) and
Sarah Bainbridge (1660-1731)

Riverview Cemetery incorporates the Friends' burying ground that was established by the Chesterfield Monthly Meeting in 1685. While the earliest gravemarkers, if any, have long since disappeared, the oldest extant markers are for John Bainbridge and his wife Sarah.

John Bainbridge, born November 2, 1657, in Yorkshire, England, and Sarah Clows, born August 27, 1660, in Cheshire, England, were married at Middletown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 1685. When he died on February 14, 1732, his will directed that a marker be erected over his grave "and on it be put the day and year of my death and my age", and another over that of his wife who died the previous year on March 25, 1731.