EAST BRUNSWICK — For more than 50 years, residents of East Brunswick honored the community’s Civil War dead with an annual Memorial Day event at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, situated in the town’s Old Bridge Village Historic District on Old Bridge Turnpike.
After a lapse of many years, this tradition is being brought back to life on May 30 with several events in the Old Bridge Village section.
Special events will honor the three Old Bridge men who died during the Civil War: Capt. Benjamin F. Lloyd and Pvts. Ferdinand Disbrow and William A. Rogers. These events include Civil War living history provided by the 2nd New Jersey Brigade; a walking tour of the Old Bridge Historic District, featuring the homes and stories of the village men who served in the Civil War; and the reading of former President Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” by a local student.
Of the three local men who died, Lloyd was the proprietor of the Railroad House Hotel, formerly known as the Old Bridge Tavern, according to historian Richard Walling. He served as the local militia captain and was responsible for maintaining 40 stands of arms and equipment and for overseeing the local militia. He became the captain of Company A of the 28th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry in September 1862. His young son, Charles, served as the company drummer. Lloyd caught typhus while in military camp and returned to his home in Old Bridge Village, where he died in 1863, Walling said. He was one of the first burials at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, although the location of his grave is now unknown.
Disbrow was 33 years old when he volunteered in the 9th New Jersey Infantry, according to Walling. After a few weeks of training, the unit was shipped to North Carolina under Gen. Ambrose Burnside for an immediate assault on Roanoke Island. During the attack, another Union regiment mistakenly fired into Disbrow’s unit and he was mortally wounded. He is buried at the New Berne National Cemetery in North Carolina, although both his parents and his wife erected separate monuments in his honor in two local cemeteries, Walling said.
Rogers, who was 17 in 1860, was the namesake of his father, Capt. Rogers, who sailed between Old Bridge Village and New York City, carrying goods and produce to the metropolis from his dock on the South River, Walling said. The younger Rogers was killed in action on May 3, 1863, at the battle of Chancellorsville, but his body was not recovered. His family erected a marble obelisk to his memory at a high point in Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Walling said. New research has identified more information about his service and his death. His remains are in a mass grave in the soil of Virginia. His childhood home still stands.
The Crandall-Kossman American Legion Post will begin the free events at 9 a.m. at Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Old Bridge Turnpike, East Brunswick. A walking tour of the village will be held at 11 a.m. beginning at Crandall School on Kossman Street. At 1 p.m. the “Gettysburg Address” will be read at the Veterans Plot, and from noon to 4 p.m. the Civil War living history display will be open at the cemetery.
The Memorial Day commemoration is sponsored by the Old Bridge Village Heritage Center and Alice Appleby DeVoe Memorial Library Association.
For more information, email [email protected] or call 732-259-6624.