Cherry Hill - Colestown Cemetery
N 39° 56.003 W 074° 59.382
18S E 500880 N 4420363
Colestown Cemetery purchased by Samuel Coles in 1685. I have a ton of cousin buried here. Plaque is just inside the archway entrance.
Waymark Code: WM8H8
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 03/07/2006
Views: 28
Colestown was a small village founded in the late 1600's on the south branch of the Pennsauken Creek near the present-day intersection of Kings Highway and Church Road. It was named after Samuel Coles, who purchased 1,000 acres there in 1685.
The village, which contained two stores, a blacksmith shop, several dwellings, a church and a cemetery, grew with the popularity of the Fountain Hotels resort in the 1800's. Its main attraction was a mineral spring thought to have medicinal value. The owner reportedly had the water tested, and a record of the analysis was cut into a marble slab, set up beside the spring. A subsequent owner of the property dismantled the hotel, used the materials for a farmhouse and installed the marble slab as a doorstep.
The Colestown Cemetery, where the earlier burial was recorded in 1746, is the only remnant of this long-vanished hamlet. The familiar stone gatehouse, constucted in 1858, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. One side of the gatehouse was used as a chapel for funeral services, and the other side was the living quarters for the superintendent of the cemetery. Below the chapel is a vault once used as a winter holding room for bodies that could not be buried in the frozen ground.
Marker Name: Samuel Coles
Marker Type: Local? Unofficial
Marker text:
Samuel Coles
1635-1693
1676 - Original and grant to Samuel Coles from William Penn
1685- New orchard purchased by Samuel Coles (present cemetery grounds)
1683-5 - Member of State Legislator
1693- Died in Barbados
Dedication Date: 05/31/1986
City: Cherry Hill
County: Camden
Group responsible for placement: National Society of Colonial Dames
Web Link: [Web Link]
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