Willow Grove Cemetery, New Brunswick
historic cemetery in New Brunswick, New Jersey
The Willow Grove Cemetery in New Brunswick, New Jersey is located behind the New Brunswick Free Public Library and the Henry Guest House. The cemetery runs along Morris Street, from Livingston Avenue to George Street. It is a contributing site of the Livingston Avenue Historic District.
The cemetery was originally a graveyard for Baptist and Presbyterian churches in the early 19th century. It is the burial place of several of the first Japanese exchange students to come to the United States, including Taro Kusakabe, a young samurai of Fukui and student of William Elliot Griffis, who studied at Rutgers University in the late 19th century and died there of tuberculosis.
Recently identified, New Brunswick Police Officer William I. Van Arsdale, died in the line of duty on December 7, 1856 at the age of 49 in a drowning in the Delaware Raritan Canal at the end of his shift. Officer Van Arsdale is the first known officer to die in the line of duty for the New Brunswick Police Department, New Jersey.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Willow Grove Cemetery, New Brunswick” as historic cemetery in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as historic cemetery in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8022323. The first chronological checks are 1856.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willow Grove Cemetery, New Brunswick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.