The Proprietors of the
Province of East New Jersey granted a tract of land for a burial ground and a town common on March 5, 1695. The settlement comprised a town hall, militia training ground, stockade, jail, church, burial ground and houses. Considerable military activity and battles known as the
Forage War took place during the Revolutionary War in the Piscatawaytown area in 1776 and 1777. The Post Road (a
post road, now Woodbridge Avenue) was a main land artery for British communications and movement of supplies and troops. The British army used St. James Church as a barracks and a hospital from December 1776 to June 1777. A
June 1835 tornado caused damage to many of the gravestones as well as Saint James Church. There had been burials at the location before the granting of tract, with one readable gravestone dating from 1693. The brothers were buried in 1693. This includes British soldiers who had died in the Revolutionary War and were buried in a common grave in 1777 . The highest ranking veteran buried in the grounds is Brevet Major General Thomas Swords, a veteran of the Mexican War and Civil War, buried in 1886. A
ground-penetrating radar scan of the burial ground conducted in 2021 identified 98 graves in the southwest corner of the grounds which has been designated as the colored burial ground. Only 11 of those individuals have been identified. In total, there have been 1,815 burials identified as of 2015, with 1,494 of those burials having gravestones. ==See also==