Help Preserve Eileen Markenstein’s Legacy
Jersey City mourned when we lost Eileen Markenstein this past August. Widely respected for her tireless work as the President of the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery, she was beloved and admired by many for her strength, resolve, intelligence, kindness, and wit.
For Eileen, interest in the cemetery began as a family affair. Four generations of Markensteins are buried in the cemetery alongside prominent local leaders and thousands of soldiers from as far back as the Revolutionary War. Before becoming an official cemetery in 1829, the 6-acre site was a bloody encampment site where General Marquis de Lafayette and 4,000 of his men joined forces with George Washington’s troops in Revolutionary War skirmishes against the British. During the War of 1812, the land served as a lookout point and was the site of an ammunition bunker, still visible today.
Since her early childhood in Jersey City, Eileen had visited the graveyard on Sundays after Church. The tradition stayed with her through adulthood until one Sunday in May 2007, when she and other visitors arrived to find the gates bolted shut. A shady caretaker had been recklessly destroying and upturning tombstones and selling phony plots, eventually skipping town, and taking off with the money. The cemetery was now in squalor, the caretaker’s home overtook by squatters. Weeds grew unchecked throughout the cemetery, towering over visitors and completely obscuring family burial sites.
In 2008 the state turned over the cemetery keys to Markenstein, and the rest is history. The painstaking work of restoring the cemetery began. Over the years, Markenstein and her army of volunteers lifted and re-grounded more than 370 monuments and tombstones. Volunteer gardeners care for the cemetery’s grounds, which are home to more than 65 species of plants and bushes and host a menagerie of visiting wildlife, including deer, cats, groundhogs, foxes, hawks, falcons, turtles, and one directionally challenged rooster. Then there are the visiting goats from upstate New York who are busy eating up invasive weeds, an eco-friendly win-win solution for the goats and other forms of wildlife who live here. Under Eileen’s stellar leadership, the cemetery has hosted annual tributes for veterans, Earth Day celebrations, and presented plays and concerts.
At the time of her passing Eileen was planning a major landscape restoration, creation of a museum, and for historic landmark status. In honor of her life’s work, the Jersey City Parks Coalition is raising funds for planting, as well as for commemorative and historic markets. Funds permitting, they will also pursue landmark status. And remaining funds will go directly to the Cemetery.
Visit here to learn more and to donate:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-eileen-markenstein-memorial-fund?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp%20share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR2yEHPUDVCsPC-DjulZFrRamBH5g5dSArPiJAwQA84ZBfoN4LhqeGeh28U