Hedy Grant was doing some research on the history of her New Milford home late last year when she came across some words on an 1883 deed that caught her attention: "old Colored Burying ground."

The handwritten document was hard to decipher and short on details. It did not state exactly where the burial ground was located, only indicating that it was part of a 5-acre property that once encompassed the area where she resides, and that a brook ran through it. Hirschfeld Brook runs behind Grant’s home.

The tantalizing clue sent her on a mission. Grant, a borough councilwoman, has been looking through books and documents, and seeking out anyone who could shed light on where this resting place for “colored” persons, as people of African descent were called, could be located.

Grant said she has contacted various entities such as the Bergen County Historical Society, the Division of Historic and Cultural Affairs for Bergen County, the Montclair History Center and Montclair State University.

“I would really like to meet with somebody who can figure these deeds out … and figure out where this 5-acre piece of land actually is, where the boundaries are,” she said. “And then to narrow it down to where the old burying ground is or might be — that’s really what I would want to accomplish.”

Christopher Matthews, a professor of anthropology at Montclair State University who specializes in urban archaeology, has looked at Grant's research and also done some of his own.

Matthews said that although directions in the deed are unclear, he believes a place to look could be property owned by the borough.

“I can see south of her property is a couple of lots, which is owned by New Milford, and a creek runs through it,” Matthews said. “So there’s a possibility that there could be something in that area.”

Matthews also believes that it could be under housing and may have been unearthed at some point during development years ago, with builders unaware of what they had uncovered. In other words, it could be gone.

Lucille Bertram, librarian for the Bergen County Historical Society and a longtime archivist who lives in New Milford, said it was the first she had heard of an unknown burial ground there.

"This is exciting news. I hope I can find any information that will help her in her search," Bertram said. "You don't hear about this too often."

What gives Grant some hope that the burial ground could be nearby is an entry in a 1964 book, "The Story of New Milford New Jersey: Birthplace of Bergen County," written by a local historian named Leon Smith.

It says that her home on Boulevard may have been a "slave house or other farm building" that is shown on an 1861 map of what was then New Barbadoes Township. It was part of land owned by John D. Demarest, a descendant of David Demarest, the French Huguenot who was one of the earliest settlers in Bergen County.

The Demarest family, which at one time owned 5,000 acres in Bergen County, settled New Milford in 1677, and descendants are buried in the French Huguenot-Demarest Cemetery behind Borough Hall on River Road.

People of African descent have lived New Jersey since the 1660s, when Dutch colonists brought over enslaved Africans to develop the colony of New Netherland. Slavery was legal until 1846 in New Jersey, making it the last northern state to abolish it.

In the 2007 book “A Huguenot on the Hackensack: David Demarest and His Legacy,” it is noted that the “Demarests were slaveholders throughout the eighteenth century,” citing the memoir of David D. Demarest, who wrote that his grandfather, Peter P. Demarest, owned a family of slaves.

More:Land believed to be part of a Native American and slave cemetery to be preserved

More:Police rescue goat found roaming Ridgewood cemetery

A solid piece of evidence

Bergen County-based historian Tim Adriance, who is related to the Demarests, said there is a very good chance that a burial ground exists.

“If it's on the deed, if it said there was a cemetery, then there is a burial ground,” Adriance said. “This is not something that is made up. This is a historical document, primary source document, not an opinion.”

If this burial ground is ever found in New Milford, it would add to the list of cemeteries across Bergen County that hold the remains of black New Jerseyans who were either slaves or free persons at the time of their deaths.

They include the Hopper Slave Cemetery in Upper Saddle River, the Gethsemane Cemetery in Little Ferry, a half-acre plot of land on Pomander Walk in Teaneck, and a small site next to Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah.

Grant hopes that by 2022, the 100th anniversary of New Milford's establishment as a borough, the burial ground will be found.

“The burying ground is something that I think would be of tremendous historic significance in the history of slavery in the United States. Particularly in New Jersey, particularly in Bergen County and in New Milford,” Grant said. “I think if it is found, if graves are able to be excavated, it might provide history of how slaves lived.”

Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com