Green Bank, New Jersey

     I really like cemeteries.  When I read a headstone, I think about the person buried under it.  I wonder about their life and times.  I'm not much of a history buff until I go to a graveyard.  Then I want to know everything about everybody interred there.
    Mike and I visited the cemetery at the Green Bank United Methodist Church.  This little backwoods church taught me a little New Jersey history and a little genealogy.  It also made me grateful for medical advancements made in the last 100 years.

Reverend Samuel Driver came to Green Bank. a village in the southern tip of Washington Township. around 1740.  He purchased thousands of acres and built a log cabin on the highest bank of the Mullica River.  When he died in 1748, his cabin became the local church.  His grave on the property was the first in the cemetery.  The Sooy family added Rev. Driver's land to their parcels.  The present day church was built on the site in 1823 by Nicholas Sooy (a fourth generation Sooy).  Nicholas left the church to his four sons and their descendants with the instruction that it should be used as a Methodist church "only and forever."

Mike, Reading the Headstones of Members of the Sooy Family
Joost (Joseph, in English) Sooy was one of the first settlers in Washington Township.  He was born in Holland in 1685.  He arrived in New York City around 1705.  From New York, he moved to Monmouth County, then to Lower Bank, Washington Township.  He is not buried here in the Methodist cemetery, but on property in another part of the township that was his plantation.  First generation Joost Sooy was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.  By the third generation, the Sooy family had turned to Methodism.      

Ephraim Sooy
 3/8/1819 to 9/16/1847
Ephraim Sooy was a fifth gereration Sooy.  He lived to be only 28 years old.  The tenth generation of Sooys was born in the 1980's.  You can study a very detailed genealogy of one branch of the family here:
http://www.bassriverhistory.org/uploads/6/8/7/1/6871754/sooy_book_w_index.pdf

Baby Graves

Infant and child mortality used to be high.  The infant mortality rate in New Jersey in 1850 was 216 deaths per 1,000 births.  In 2013 the death rate for babies in New Jersey was 4.5 deaths per 1,000 births.  Out of the 587 graves in this cemetery, seventy two belong to children under the age of 18.  Only five of those 72 children were born in the 20th century.  

The Mullica River flows in front of the church and cemetery.

Green Bank State Forest lies in back of the church and cemetery.

      

Hail As Big As ... As Big As Garlic Cloves, I Suppose

     I was in the kitchen mixing up a batch of London broil marinade when the sky opened up.  Thunder storms in these parts don't usually include hail, and when they do, the hail is little, like Le Sueur baby peas.  The stuff that fell today was as big as the garlic cloves I planned to crush for the marinade.  The wind took some branches down, and the hail made a racket when it hit the roof.  We have a mess to clean up, but no real damage.
     So, how big was the biggest hailstone in the world?  The heaviest fell in Bangladesh on April 14, 1986 - 2.25 pounds.  The largest diameter, 7.9 inches, belongs to a hailstone that fell in Vivian, South Dakota on July 23, 2010.  An ice ball dropped in Aurora, Nebraska on June 22, 2003 that had the largest circumference - 18.74 inches.  Hail falls along the path of a thunder storm, and accumulations can be 18 inches deep.  On July 29, 2010, a thunderstorm maintained a stationary position in Denver, Colorado and dropped 4 feet of hail on one city block.  The biggest hailstones in our area were as big as tennis balls (2.5 inches in diameter).  They fell on May 29, 1995.
     Besides damaging buildings, cars, and (worst of all) crops, hail can be deadly.  The worst case of deadly hail happened in Roopkund, India.  In 1942 a British forest ranger exploring a valley discovered a frozen lake that was completely full of skeletons.  Scientists studied the remains when the lake thawed the following summer.  Every person had been killed by multiple blows to the head and shoulders with  objects the size of tennis balls.  The remains dated to 850 A.D.  Evidently, this group of people got caught in the valley when a hail storm moved through. Later water filled the valley floor, hiding the victims until the forest ranger happened upon them.  A folk song from the area describes how a goddess saw a group of people defiling the landscape, so she killed them by pelting them with ice stones.  Boy, that's an example of a legend being based in fact.
   

A View from the Kitchen Window

The hail really shows up against the black mulch.

These are a bit melted.  I had to wait until things quieted down before I could grab these samples.

Yep, as big as garlic cloves!