Arney's Mount Burial Ground - Columbus, NJ - Worldwide Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

The cemetery is located on a steep rise which begins at the meetinghouse and continue to top of the cemetery. If you are facing the front of the meetinghouse, the cemetery is located to the left. There is a stone wall around the meetinghouse property which matches the cemetery wall.

The cemetery is rumored to be haunted. Investigations by the New Jersey Ghost Research organization revealed strange auditory anomalies as well as floating orbs. Spooky stuff. To find out more about this spooky place visit their WEB SITE

A list of 31 burials can be found their HERE

Built of native sandstone quarried from the mount on which it stands, Arney's Mount Meetinghouse has stood since 1775 at the intersection of the road from Mount Holly to Juliustown and the Pemberton-Jobstown Road. A wall of native sandstone was built around the burying ground in 1860. The meetinghouse is at the s.w. corner of the intersection of Juliustown and Arney's Mt. Roads.

On thie second and fourth Sundays of each month, everyone is welcome to join the meeting for worship in the beautiful old stone Meetinghouse. At 10 am they settle into worship. Quaker worship is held in silence. Each person present silently prays, mediatates, or otherwise waits upon the Divine as each feels is appropriate. Some may feel led to stand and speak to share a thought, recollection, observation, or insight with others who are present. Friends hold that such messages arise from Divine leading. At 11 o clock, the Friend who has been appointed Head of Meeting for this month will turn and shake hands with the next person, and everyone in the Meetinghouse turns and shakes hands with the person sitting on each side, and Meeting is over. And that is how we do Meeting for Worship!

From the New Jersey Historic Trust web site: Arney’s Mount Friends Meeting house was constructed c. 1775-76 of local sandstone in a vernacular design. It is the oldest meeting house without interior partitions in the region that is still in use. The meeting house is remarkably preserved from its 1811 appearance when portions of the building were reconstructed after a fire. The building was vacant from 1871 until the meeting was revived in 1941. The original cedar roof is now asphalt shingle. The surrounding burial ground retains its integrity.

An earlier grant helped to fund the preparation of a preservation plan for the building. A more recent grant helped fund a detailed structural assessment and preparation of construction documents that will help the meeting stabilize the structure for future generations of use.

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The New Jersey Churchscape website has this to say: The solid stone building still houses an occasional meeting of Quakers in the area. It was built in 1775 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The application for Register status lists Samuel Smith as builder. There is no village nearby, but several early meetinghouses were built at a convenient crossroads, more-or-less equidistant from all members. There is a large burial grounds to the side of this building.

Woodward & Hageman's History of Burlington County (1883) notes that early meetings in the area were held in a shoolhouse at Caleb's Corner. It was not until 1776, however, that a Preparative Meeting was established here. In 1783 there were four Preparative Meetings that composed the Upper Springfield Monthly Meeting—in Mansfield, Arneytown, Upper Freehold, and Upper Springfield. Each of these had a membership of nearly two hundred fifty. Arney's Mount Meeting had already been in existence for some years, as there are records indicating that Friends belonging to the upper part of the Mount Holly meeting applied for a weekly meeting by 1743.

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