A tour group listens on as Joe Ungrady of Old Bridge portrays minister John Killian during a candlelight tour of the Historic Chestnut Hill Cemetery on Sunday night. CHRIS ZAWISTOWSKI EAST BRUNSWICK — It was the weekend of the living dead.
Well, sort of.
Themen and women of the township’s past came back to life on two crisp fall nights on Oct. 22 and 23, sharing their tales with visitors as part of the East Brunswick Museum’s annual candlelight tour of the historic Chestnut Hill cemetery.
Several re-enactors, as well as Ken “the singing psychic,” helped to bring the historic residents back to life on a tour that Mark Nonestied, a past president of the East Brunswick Museum who organizes the event, said provides a unique and fun way to teach people about local history.
To uncover the stories behind the names on the cemetery’s tombstones, Nonesteid mines troves of different information, including census records, newspaper archives and other documents to help craft a script about their life and times, a process that takes months. Re-enactors then take the script and dressed in the clothes from the era, present these people to tour-goers, each with their own personality and way of interpreting the person they are playing
“It’s fun,” Nonesteid said. “I think people really enjoy it.”
The portrayals change each year and have included some of the more famous people laid to rest in the cemetery that houses graves dating back to the 1830s — including the 19thcentury landscape artist James Crawford Thom and children’s book writer Henrietta Christian Wright — and everyday people as well.
“It’s just a story of the common person from the time period, and that’s a story that’s worth telling,” Nonesteid said.
With 2011 marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, this year’s tour worked to tell the stories of historic residents like Catherine Appleby, who lived through or was affected by the War Between the States.
Martha Austin Appleby, born in 1849, was married to Civil War veteran William Appleby, amember of the 28th Regiment of New Jersey Volunteers. William was injured in battle and discharged during the war, re-enlisting later in the Navy and serving aboard the USS Nantucket.
Appleby, portrayed by East Brunswick Museum President Kathie Waite, showed 21stcentury visitors a letter her husband received from a fellow soldier after the war that stated, “Well Appleby, we did not think then that we were making so much history. The Volunteers took it all as a matter of course.”
The Rev. John D. Killian, a Pennsylvania native who moved to East Brunswick to become the pastor of the Old Bridge Baptist Church, explained his church’s battle over the use of music in the liturgy and the repositioning of the church to face Kossman Street to minimize the appearance of a pigpen outside the church.
“You can’t make up this stuff,” Killian, played by Joe Ungrady of Old Bridge, joked.
But not all actors on tour were from the past. Ken “TheBroadwayMedium” Roginski, channeled the spirit of Frank Treat and told his tale through Broadway show tunes. Treat’s family owned a hotel on corner Kossman Street and the Old Bridge Turnpike in the early 1900s and served as an important destination, as Old Bridge Turnpike was the major highway to New Brunswick at the time.
“It served the best beer in town,” Roginiski, a Freehold resident, sang. “Friends would often stay here, kids would also play here, I wish that we all were still around.”
Later, Treat worked for the Brookfield Glass Insulator in Sayreville, creating glass insulators for telephone poles and served an important role as the gas lamp lighter for the East Brunswick Historic Village.
“So you know, I lived in the village below,” Roginski sang to the melody of George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” “And we had gas lights on the street that provided the glow. My responsibility was to light the lamps each evening. I was the old lamp lighter of long, long ago.”
Roginski, a historic preservationist who has appeared on TLC’s show “Dead Tenants,” said he has been doing the tour for many years and enjoys the reaction he gets from people during his presentation.
He said that the tour is a great way to teach people about history at a venue, the cemetery, that is perfect for the season and he finds fascinating.
“They are our outdoor museums,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Contact Chris Zawistowski at [email protected].