Est. 1733 · Oldest burial ground in Morristown (1733) · National Register of Historic Places (1973) · Site of Revolutionary War smallpox burials (winter 1777) · Church served as Continental Army hospital during Washington's encampment · Founding family graves: Lindsleys, Fords, Vails, Kings
The First Presbyterian Church in Morristown traces its congregation to 1733, the same year the burying ground behind the building was established. The church sat at the center of what would become Morris County's seat of government, and the families whose surnames defined Morristown's early history — the Lindsleys, the Fords, the Kings, the Vails — are represented across multiple generations of markers in the churchyard.
The cemetery's most significant historical moment came in the winter of 1777. After the victories at Trenton and Princeton, Washington's Continental Army retreated to Morristown for the winter. The army was in poor condition; smallpox had spread through the ranks. The First Presbyterian Church building was commandeered as a hospital. Soldiers who died of the disease that winter were buried in the churchyard in unmarked graves — approximately 150 men, by some estimates, interred without individual markers alongside the prominent local families whose gravestones surround them.
The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 30, 1973, recognized for its significance in colonial history and its association with the Revolutionary War. The church remains an active congregation, and the graveyard is maintained as a public historic site. Walking tours of the grounds have been organized periodically by the church itself, by Historic Speedwell, and by Morris County Tourism, each approaching the site from a different angle — architectural, genealogical, or military historical.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_Cemetery,_Morristown
- https://pcmorristown.org/about/our-history/historic-graveyard/graveyard-tour-5/
- https://njskylands.com/history-morristown-graveyard
Mass grave of ~150 unmarked Revolutionary War soldiers (documented, not paranormal)General historical atmosphere cited in regional ghost walk programming
The Morristown Presbyterian burying ground does not carry a dominant ghost legend in the manner of sites with specific named apparitions. What it carries is the documented historical record of mass death: roughly 150 soldiers buried in unmarked graves in a churchyard that already held the named dead of Morristown's founding families, with no individual stones to distinguish them from the winter ground.
The 'Bones and Stones' walking tour, offered periodically by the First Presbyterian Church and by Historic Speedwell, treats this history directly. Local historians walk visitors through the graveyard and cover the founding families of Morristown through their stones, the architecture of the church over three centuries, and the specific tragedy of the smallpox burials. The tour title gestures toward the gap between the named and the unnamed dead.
Morristown's October ghost walks, organized through the Morris County tourism network, have included the churchyard as a stop, drawing on the Revolutionary War deaths and the long history of the building — which has stood near this same ground since 1733. The combination of a functioning church, a 300-year-old burying ground, and the documented mass burial of soldiers makes it one of the more historically layered dark-tourism sites in northern New Jersey.
