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.