We restlessly seek what is next for maximizing life - and boldly grow the lifestyle brands and experiences that define it. Robbins is a resident of Havre de Grace, Md., and a descendant of the Robbins family of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Township area.Equinox Group is a high growth collective of the world's most influential, experiential, and differentiated lifestyle brands. I am currently in the process of forming a nonprofit organization to take control of the property in order to properly maintain it.Ī cleanup is being organized for the early part of March to begin the process of returning the burial ground to a state of respect. Kennedy, the 1943 deed with trustee Neil West, her grandfather, was the last deed. She indicated that the burial ground was not turned over to the state, and according to Mrs. I made contact with Beverly Kennedy, a West descendant, who has all the deeds – including the first deed of 1762 with the thumbprint of Daniel Robins, the originator of the deed. My next task was to trace the descendants of the last known trustees. They could not find a deed to the burial ground and concluded that the descendants of the trustees could still be the owners of that 1-acre parcel. In 2020, I submitted an Open Public Records Act request and received a response from the Bureau of Legal Services and Stewardship in the DEP’s Green Acres program. This led me on my 16-year pursuit to answer the question of whether the Green Acres program actually had control of the property. When I inquired as to who maintains the property, I was told by the DEP to check the deed. In 2004, I discovered my ancestors settled in the Allentown area and were buried in the Robbins Burial Ground. My interest in my ancestors began in 1971 while researching my family history for a high school paper. The 2004 visit to the burial ground started a process to determine the ownership of the property. In 1965-66, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Green Acres program acquired the properties surrounding the burial ground to form the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area and over the years many people assumed the state had acquired the burial ground, too. Palmer West, Mollie West Flock, John Field and Franklin G. Robbins and Charles Percy Hutchinson, the son of Barton Hutchinson.įinally, on April 3, 1943, the deed was transferred to James West, Neil West, C. 1, 1884, Nathan Robbins’ sole surviving trustee transferred the property to his son Samuel Robbins and Barton Hutchinson.Ī subsequent deed dated transferred the burial ground to George B. 16, 1847 to Elisha, Jacob, Timothy and Nathan Robbins. On March 3, 1796, the deed was transferred to David Robbins, George Robins, Antrim Robins, Ephraim Robins, Ezekiel Robins, Elijah Robins and Isaac Robins. The first trustees included Moses Robins, Joseph Robins, Daniel Robins, Nathan Robins, Zebulon Robins and Moses Robins Jr. The first deed designating the Robins Burial Ground was created in 1762 after Daniel Robins, the grandson of Daniel Robins Sr., the first settler, through Moses Robins, established a deed of trust for the family. I was not the first to discover this quiet and eerie resting place for more than 200 souls.Īccording to local newspaper stories, the mysterious cemetery in the woods had been discovered and rediscovered numerous times since the headstone of Deborah Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s second great aunt, was uncovered during America’s centennial in 1876. The stone was erected in 1938 by twin brothers James and Clayton Palmer West who were descendants of Randal Robbins Sr., who is my fourth great-grandfather. The latter, Ye Olde Robbins Burial Place, was inscribed on the granite stone I had passed heading to the trailhead. The burial ground had been known by different names over the centuries – Quaker burying ground, Robbins burial ground, Lincoln burial ground, Covell Hill cemetery, Cobble Hill, Coppermine Hill and the Ye Olde Robbins Burial Place. I was standing on hallowed ground surrounded by the forest. The graves were spread over what I would discover later was a 1-acre plot, seemingly too large for a family burial site, but typical of a churchyard cemetery but no remains of a church could be found. Rough stones, arranged in rows, appeared as I reached the top of the hill, and beyond them white headstones sprouted from the ground like ghosts lending a haunting appearance to the scene.
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