249: A GRAVE MOMENT IN PRINCETON CAUSED BY A BURR IN MY BREECHES

We rolled into historic Princeton, New Jersey at roughly 5:15pm on Sunday June 11, 2023. Since it was so late in the day, my photographer and his friend Bob Moldenhauer knew they didn’t have enough time to see all of the sites on their agenda before dark. In an effort to maximize their time, my companions decided to visit several gravesites on that Sunday evening, while they’d save all of the historic homes and Princeton University for Monday morning.

It had been a little over two years since my last visit to Princeton with Tom and Bob, and I was thrilled to be back. And what’s not to love about Princeton? The town was established before the Revolutionary War, and today is chuck-full of rich, American history. Whenever I visit, I love walking in the footsteps of Presidents Washington, Madison, Cleveland, and Wilson, as well as Declaration of Independence signers Richard Stockton and John Witherspoon. Perhaps my favorite place of all is the beautiful campus of Princeton University, which was where James Madison and Woodrow Wilson each had graduated, and where Albert Einstein had once lectured. JFK attended Princeton as well, but he dropped out after six weeks due to illness.

A little over two hours earlier, the three of us had visited the room where Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. But at Princeton Cemetery, which was located roughly 50 miles from Grover’s birthplace, I found myself standing on the nine-foot-tall granite monument where President Cleveland was laid to rest on June 26, 1908, two days after his death. After Tom placed me on Cleveland’s uniquely shaped tombstone, I stood for a moment in silence and thought about the hardworking, responsible President. Cleveland’s last words, spoken from his bed at his Westland estate in Princeton, were “I have tried so hard to do right.” While Grover was not overly brilliant and he never attended college, he was a diligent worker who fought against corruption at every level of government he served – from Mayor of Buffalo to President of the United States. During his two terms in the White House, he often went against his own Democratic Party to sign bills that he believed would help our entire nation, and not just political cronies.

From my precarious perch atop the monument, I envisioned the simple and solemn graveside ceremony that began at 6pm on a humid June evening in 1908. In my mind’s eye, I saw Frances Folsom Cleveland, and her children Esther and Richard, standing directly in front of the burial plot, while President Theodore Roosevelt was positioned behind the former First Lady. A small handful of dignitaries, including several governors, gathered around the plot during the ceremony that lasted only five minutes.

Just before my photographer plucked me from Grover Cleveland’s tombstone after I had finished paying my personal respects to the President, I heard Tom and Bob as they discussed making the short walk over to the Presidents’ Lot. I was instantly confused – wasn’t Cleveland the only President buried in Princeton Cemetery? Then it dawned on me – the Presidents’ Lot they were talking about was an area in the southwest corner of the historic burial ground where many of the past Presidents of Princeton University were laid to rest. During my first two trips to the cemetery, I had stood on two gravesites within the Lot, also known as Presidents’ Row; not because of their roles within the university’s prestigious history, it was due to their status in American history – good and bad.

The tombstone marking the grave of Aaron Burr was the first of our two targets within Presidents’ Row. As soon as Tom placed me on top of Burr’s five-foot-tall white marble marker, I felt an instant sense of disgust – which was the same feeling I had during my first two visits. I am not, nor will I ever be, a huge fan of Aaron Burr, Jr. Even though Burr helped fight for American Independence during the Revolutionary War, he became a political adversary of Thomas Jefferson after the two tied for Electoral Votes during the 1800 Presidential election. Their highly contested battle for the White House ended up in the House of Representatives, which ultimately chose Jefferson as our third President. Jefferson’s victory didn’t come easy, as it took 36 separate votes over a six-day period in Congress to eventually pick the winner. Aaron Burr, the loser, was forced to settle for the role of Vice President – and that obviously didn’t set too well with either man. As a matter of fact, when Burr discovered Jefferson had planned to replace him with George Clinton as V.P. for the 1804 election, tensions grew even worse. That’s when Alexander Hamilton came into the picture. Hamilton, who was the first Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, was an adversary to both Jefferson and Burr as he didn’t support their political beliefs. However, when Hamilton helped Jefferson beat Burr during the House vote, and then Alexander’s verbal attack on Burr surfaced in a newspaper, the Vice President challenged the former Treasury Secretary to a duel on July 11, 1804. And y’all know how that turned out – or you should know how that duel ended!

Aaron Burr wasn’t satisfied with murdering Hamilton, a crime for which he was eventually acquitted. After he was forced out of office as Vice President in 1805, Burr tried to form his own country in the Texas Territory where he planned to be Emperor and perhaps take over the entire United States. Burr’s dastardly scheme was discovered, foiled, and he was arrested for treason, as well as a potential insurrection against Jefferson. But when the Supreme Court ruled in Burr’s favor due to lack of substantial evidence, Aaron Burr was once again acquitted of any wrongdoing. With his tail tucked between his legs, Burr took his much-deserved tarnished reputation and moved to Europe where he lived in self-imposed exile. The scoundrel, and Jefferson adversary, returned to our country in 1812 where he practiced law under the last name of Edwards, which was his mother’s maiden name.

Burr, or Aaron Edwards, was 71 years old when he married a widow named Eliza Jumel on July 1, 1833. Jumel was 19 years younger than Burr and was very wealthy. However, when Eliza realized her money was dwindling due to her new husband’s land speculation losses, she filed for divorce after only four months of marriage. Can you guess who Eliza’s divorce lawyer was? None other than Alexander Hamilton, Jr. – it was poetic justice at its finest. On the day their divorce was finalized, which was September 14, 1836, Aaron Burr died in a boarding house on Staten Island.

As I stood on Burr’s stained, marble tombstone, I thought about the Sir Walter Scott poem I heard when my photographer watched the movie ‘Groundhog Day’. To me, Scott’s words were a fitting tribute to one of America’s biggest scoundrels – at least up until 2021. “The wretch, concentered all in self; living, shall forfeit fair renown, and, doubly dying, shall go down. To the vile dust from whence he sprung – unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”

I was extremely happy when my photographer removed me from Aaron Burr’s grave marker and carried me to another nearby tombstone – one that was in line with a handful of nearly identical crypts along President’s Row. While I consider Burr one of our Founding Failures, John Witherspoon was one of our influential and highly respected Founding Fathers. Witherspoon was born in Scotland, where he served as a minister for roughly a decade until he came to New Jersey in 1768. Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, both future members of the Second Continental Congress, had persuaded Witherspoon to be President of the Presbyterian College of New Jersey, which later became known as Princeton University.

Witherspoon took his common-sense philosophical approach to Philadelphia in 1776 where he became a member of the Second Continental Congress alongside Rush and Stockton. Once there, he was quickly appointed congressional chaplain. But at one point, during the heated discussions of whether or not the colonies should break free from Great Britain’s rule, Witherspoon stood and stated our new nation was “not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of rotting for the want of it.”

In November of ’76, three months after Witherspoon and most of his colleagues signed their names to the Declaration of Independence, British soldiers invaded New Jersey and occupied Princeton’s Nassau Hall and burned the college library – including all of Witherspoon’s personal notes. On October 4, 1777, the Signer’s eldest son James was killed by the British during the Battle of Germantown. When the Revolutionary War was finally over in 1783, the former Princeton President and dedicated Patriot of Freedom, John Witherspoon, helped rebuild the college, which caused him great personal and financial difficulties.

When Tom gently placed me onto the top of John Witherspoon’s large and severely weathered sarcophagus, I found the inscription was very difficult to read as it was heavily stained from years of pollution, plus most of it was written in Latin. Later in life, Witherspoon suffered from eye injuries and was blind by 1792. Two years later, on November 15, 1794, John Witherspoon died on his farm, Tusculum, at the age of 71. I found it ironic the Signer knew Aaron Burr during both men’s time at Princeton, and their final resting places ended up within fifty feet of each other. It seemed to me the apple didn’t fall far from the tree – even though Witherspoon was the ripe apple of freedom, while Burr became the rotten apple of treason.

The clock on the Explorer’s dashboard read six o’clock as we headed out of Princeton Cemetery. While it was great seeing the Cleveland family plot again, as well as the final resting place of John Witherspoon, it would have been fine with me had we bypassed our visit with Aaron Burr. When I stood on Burr’s grave, I had the same feeling as I had at the graves of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth. After all, those three good-for-nothing scumbags each altered American history, and not for the better. However, during the ten-minute drive that took us south of downtown Princeton and out into a rural area, I put my thoughts of the scoundrel behind me and focused on our next site – which Tom said was our final stop of the day.

As soon as we pulled into a parking area near the Stony Brook Meeting House and Cemetery, I looked out from an opening in the camera case and saw a small, stone building situated alongside a five-foot-tall stone wall. The building was a Quaker meeting house, which was built in 1760 on the site of the original 1726 structure that had burned to the ground. While the Stony Brook Meeting House looked historically cool, it was not the focus of our visit.

With me in tow, Tom and Bob headed past the meeting house where they found a gated entrance to the burial ground. Thankfully the gate was open, although I’m sure Bob would have climbed over the wall had it been locked. Once we were inside the large, two-hundred-foot square plot of land, I was stunned to see there weren’t many visible headstones – and the ones I did see looked small and severely weather-worn. Quakers, or Friends, were known for their simplistic traditions and discouraged elaborate grave markers. Over the past 250-plus years, it was likely some of the small, flush-to-the-ground markers were lost to the environment and were no longer visible. In my mind, they were Friends in all the wrong places.

Located next to the stone wall, just inside the gated entrance, was the small monument dedicated to Richard Stockton, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Following the Signer’s death from cancer at the age of 50, the Congressman was laid to rest within the walls of the Stony Brook Meeting House Cemetery – but unfortunately, his actual gravesite had been lost to time. In 1913, however, the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution erected the small monument in honor of the fallen patriot – one of our Founding Fathers who died a hero after he paid the ultimate price for a cause he believed in.

In 1776, Richard Stockton, a Princeton resident, was elected to the Second Continental Congress. That same year, he helped debate and pass the resolution for the 13 Colonies to become a free and independent nation. Stockton signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776. However, just three months later, he was betrayed by the rotten Loyalists and was turned over to the British. Stockton was dragged off in the bitter cold and imprisoned at Perth Amboy, New Jersey; then he was taken to the notorious Provost Jail in New York where he suffered brutal treatment during his incarceration until he was finally paroled on January 13, 1777.

After George Washington helped negotiate his release from prison, Stockton returned to Princeton a devastated man. His beloved home, Morven, had been pillaged of its library and furniture. His fortune was all but gone; and he left prison a virtual invalid. Two years after his release from prison, the Signer developed cancer of the lip that spread to his throat. He was never free of pain until his death at Morven, at the age of 50, on February 28, 1781.

When Tom placed me on the small monument dedicated to the memory of Richard Stockton, it couldn’t have been a more resolute and gratifying moment for me. From that stone marker, I looked out over the hallowed grounds and wondered where the brave Signer had actually been buried. But it didn’t matter – I knew Richard Stockton was there with me; I could feel his presence. During that moment, I also thought about the words penned on the historic declaration of freedom, conceived in the mind of Thomas Jefferson, and signed by 56 brave men including Richard Stockton. “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”

When Mongo closed the gate to the cemetery behind him, the three of us ventured over to the 1760 Meeting House where I posed for a couple of photos. The place appeared to be in a state of disrepair, although ongoing renovation work will hopefully save it from total devastation. While it was likely no President ever set foot in the house or on the grounds, I figured Richard Stockton attended services inside the building at one point during his life. In my book, that was good enough to call the Stony Brook Meeting House a very historic site. Like Tom and Bob have said thousands of times in the past – just because something is old, doesn’t make it historic. If that was the case, both my photographer and Bob Moldenhauer would be two very historic son-of-a-guns!

It was getting late in the afternoon and my companions had put in a full day of exploration, which was normal for those two knuckleheads. Bob had made reservations for us to stay at the Hampton Inn, which was the same hotel we had lodged during our visit to Princeton two years earlier. The only difference I noticed when Tom carried me inside the hotel was manager Melissa Prayer was gone. During our 2021 visit, Prayer’s words of encouragement helped put a rejuvenated bounce back into my head.

Unpacked and in our room for the night, Tom and Bob’s dinner consisted of the food they had stowed away and brought with them. Perhaps my companions weren’t overly hungry after filling their faces with burgers in Caldwell.

I stood in my usual place alongside the room’s television set where I spent the night alone with my thoughts. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get Aaron Burr out of my mind. Even though I stood in honor on the graves of John Witherspoon and Richard Stockton, two men who sacrificed so much during the formation of our new nation and who were everything Aaron Burr wasn’t, the dastardly deeds of Burr flooded my resin head. I couldn’t imagine what this nation might be like today had the House of Representatives voted in Burr’s favor over Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

Aaron Burr was a devious scoundrel and a traitor who attempted to start an insurrection against President Jefferson and the American government by forming his own nation where he would rule as Emperor. Burr even endangered national security when he tried to get Great Britain to help him with his scheme. He was the first Vice President, albeit after he left office, to be tried in a court of law. Thankfully, on a stormy day in 1807, Aaron Burr’s thirst for power was trumped – and Thomas Jefferson kept America great, again!