The first known burial in Woodland was recorded on August 23, 1856, a
child named August Schinde, though there could have been another
youngster buried there a day before, according to Mary Lish, who keeps
records of Woodland’s burials.
The first adult burial was recorded a couple of months later in October
1856.
Mary Lish is comfortable with there being just over 84,200 bodies
buried at Woodland Cemetery. And she pointed out that around 20,000 of the first 33,000 Woodland burials, in a period starting in 1856 and ending in 1899, were of children. That’s three out of every five burials for almost a half-century.
This is a decade-by-decade breakdown of the number of burials in
Woodland prepared by Mary Lish. You’ll note that the two periods of greatest activity were from 1890 to 1899 and from 1900 to 1909. By 1910, Newark’s population was approaching 350,000, well above today’s Census count. You’ll also see that the Woodland burial numbers dropped dramatically after 1979, around the time the cemetery fell into such disrepair that you could say it had all but been abandoned, though technically it was still open – like always – as a private, nonprofit cemetery. Research by Mary Lish and presented by Guy Sterling.
Woodland 