February 28, 2018: 160th Anniversary of the Incorporation of Riverview Cemetery

Today marks the 160th Anniversary of the Incorporation of Riverview Cemetery Corporation.

Jacob M. Taylor, “late [a] farmer” and director of several companies, conceived the idea of establishing a cemetery in Trenton on the highlands above the Delaware River at the southern edge of the city sometime in 1857. He presented his plan to William M. Force, a merchant; John K. Smith, a retired iron manufacturer; Isaac Stephens, a merchant; David Witherup, a carpenter by trade and an incorporator and superintendent of Mercer Cemetery; and William S. Yard, a blacksmith and railing maker; and they together founded Riverview Cemetery on January 16, 1858.

A portion of the “Sixth Ward of the City of Trenton” map published by
Everts and Stewart, Philadelphia, in 1875.
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

The Riverview Cemetery Corporation, a stock company, was incorporated by an act of the state legislature on February 28, 1858, and the newly formed Cemetery immediately set about constructing avenues and pathways on the grounds, then but a few acres that encompassed the Friends’ Burying Ground, along with the planting of trees.

From these modest beginnings, Riverview Cemetery is today comprised of some 40 acres that are beautifully landscaped with trees, shrubs, and flowers, all of which complement a fine collection of 19th and 20th-century funerary art and architecture.

Restoration of the Tattersall Monument

Among the monuments cited in Riverview Cemetery’s nominating documents for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places was a narrative description and image of the Celtic Cross on the Tattersall plot:

Tattersall: James C. Tattersall (1872-1932), president of The Tattersall Coal Company, is interred in Section R, Lot 75-76 ... The monument (Trenton Evening Times, April 19, 1921, p. 12) on the plot is a replica of the St. Martin’s Cross located at Iona, Scotland, and was carved from blue-white granite quarried in Westerly, Rhode Island, by Alexander McDonald Co., Trenton, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm also carved the individual lawn level markers of a complementary style.

Tattersall Monument, 2015

Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana

Often described as one of the most beautiful of all the pines, the Himalayan Pine, or Pinus wallichiana from the earlier P. excelsa, is native to the high mountain valleys of not only the Himalayas, but the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges which extend across parts of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Although the tree grows to a height of up to 150 feet in the wild, in cultivation it usually attains a height of up to 90 feet with a spread of 35 feet. It has gray-green needles that are eight inches long and produces slender cones that are six to ten inches long.

Seeds were introduced to England in 1827 by Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist for whom its present botanical name is derived, and the tree became available to the European nursery trade in 1836, and thence to North America.

Himalayan Pine at Main Gate

“Among the numerous members of the pine family, it would be difficult to find one more beautiful and useful than the Himalayan [Pine],” noted nurseryman Joseph Meehan in the trade journal Park and Cemetery (1896). “There are but few others possessing the many good points of this one, and it is no wonder that it is such a universal favorite.” As the tree ages “there is rather more of a drooping tendency in the branches, and it is this, with its beautiful needles, which gives it such a charm. On large grounds, it is much in place in certain positions, and for cemetery planting it is unequaled.”

Riverview Cemetery’s single specimen, a stately tree that’s weathered many a winter, stands just inside the main gate to the west and was likely planted at the turn of the last century.

Alexander McDonald Company

For much of the first half of the last century, the monumental works of Alexander McDonald Company were located just outside the gate of Riverview Cemetery, next door to the old superintendent’s house and office, and it was here that its many artisans and carvers turned out all manner of memorialization in stone from simple headstones to elaborate monuments for the city’s burgeoning population.

The office and display of Alexander McDonald Company
on Centre Street and stone-yard on Second Street as they appeared in 1921

Alexander McDonald was born April 28, 1829, in Aberdeen, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1852. Arriving in New York City, he made his way to Albany, N.Y., and finally to Cambridge, Mass., where in 1856 he established a monumental firm bearing his name opposite the entrance to Mount Auburn Cemetery. After retiring in 1887, his son Frank R. McDonald took over the day-to-day operations and the firm continued as Alexander McDonald and Son.

The Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba

Among the 500 trees comprising 71 species at Riverview Cemetery is a majestic specimen of Northern Red Oak, or Quercus ruba, which can be found along Myrtle Avenue in Section E near the southern boundary of the grounds.

Known for its brilliant red fall color, the tree is native to the eastern and central United States; its range extends into Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota to the west. It can reach 60 to 75 feet in height with a crown spread of 45 feet at maturity when open grown, and the oblong-shaped leaves are five to eight inches long with seven to 11 bristle-tipped lobes.

Our tree has a 60-inch caliper as recorded by B.W. Bosenberg and Company, landscape architects based in Far Hills, N.J., which translates to a circumference of nearly 16 feet. The Sunday Times-Advertiser of December 12, 1915, notes that “due to his extensive knowledge in the care of trees, [Isaac] Stephens was given entire charge of the planting of all the trees in Riverview Cemetery, of which he was one of the founders,” likely making it among the earliest planted on the grounds after the Cemetery’s incorporation on February 28, 1858, a feat all the more remarkable as I am told it survived a lightning strike a number of decades ago.