Saturday's tour at a glance

  • When: Saturday, Oct. 24, at 2 p.m. Mayor Roger Lane opens with remarks at the War Memorial, and then visitors take the self-guided tour with a map.[1][2]
  • Where: Wyckoff Reformed Church, 580 Wyckoff Ave.[3]
  • Cost: Free, with no sign-up.[4]
  • Before you go: Our guide to the 1916 list explains how to search it for an ancestor.

Wyckoff Reformed Church is holding its first self-guided cemetery tour Saturday, with 20 signs, each 2 feet by 3 feet, posted throughout the cemetery, said Hugh Lappe, president of the volunteer board that manages it.[2][3][4] Mayor Roger Lane will welcome visitors at 2 p.m. at the War Memorial, and then they get a map and walk the cemetery at their own pace.[1][2]

The tour is free and open to anyone, with no sign-up, Lappe said. It is part of Wyckoff's centennial.[4] "Join us for our first self-guided tour of the WRC Cemetery," the church wrote in a public Facebook post.[3]

The stone church was finished in 1806, and the cemetery surrounds it on the south, east and north sides.[5] In 1898, a fire in the church destroyed most of its earlier records and documents, according to the church's National Register of Historic Places nomination.[5] In 1916, George H. Budke copied the cemetery's inscriptions, and that list of 581 entries is now searchable online.[6]

Each sign covers a person buried there, an unusual stone, or a resident whose name or business visitors may recognize, Lappe said.[7] Most run about 250 words.[8] One marks the monument of John "Jack" Vander Plaat, whose family started the Vander Plaat Funeral Home, he said.[9] The tour also highlights 25 veterans of the Revolutionary and Civil wars, which Lane will note, Lappe said in a message after the interview.[10] "It's an educational thing," Lappe said, for people "to understand how the church, the cemetery, and Wyckoff history have all come together over the last, well, 100 years officially, but you know, way back to 1806."[7]

The cemetery is still in use. It is non-denominational, and burials there are open to all, Lappe said.[10] The tour ends in the section where most burials happen today, and the cemetery buries about 40 people a year, Lappe estimated.[11] Lappe has worked with the cemetery for about eight years.[12]