North Jersey cemetery is home to 125 veterans from six wars. Meet the volunteers mending it\n\nWilliam Westhoven\n\nMorristown Daily Record\n\nKeith Titus, a retired Dover accountant, spends nearly every day maintaining and restoring the historic Orchard Street Cemetery. The nearly two-century-old burial ground is a final resting spot for military veterans going back to the War of 1812, along with other notable residents. Veterans from six wars are buried there, along with former mayors and a congressmen, business leaders, and the inventor of the steel guitar.\n\nIt's often said that cemeteries make good neighbors. In Dover, that works both ways for lifelong resident Keith Titus. The former town alderman is 72 now and retired from a long career as a Nabisco accountant. He can be found almost every sunny day volunteering at the historic Orchard Street Cemetery, tending to the grounds and meticulously cleaning mausoleums, markers, and memorial obelisks while tackling bigger projects like the restoration of broken headstones, some dating back to before the burial ground's official opening in 1851.\n\nThe garden-like spot is the final resting place for prominent local politicians, business leaders, a musical inventor, and, most notably on Memorial Day weekend, at least 125 veterans from six American conflicts stretching back to the War of 1812.\n\n\"It's a lot of work,\" said Titus, a genial, self-effacing grouch who joked he is \"too old and fat\" to have his picture taken. \"I'm gonna have to live a long time to get this finished.\"\n\nTitus said his primary purpose for spending his days in the cemetery is that \"it's quiet here. Nobody bothers me.\"\n\nBut pressed for his real motivation, Titus opened up about the history lesson embedded in the Orchard Street Cemetery's 6 acres and 3,500 graves, representing generations of the town's founding fathers, elected leaders (including a congressman) and military veterans.\n\nGenerations of warriors at Orchard Street Cemetery\n\nTitus estimates there are five combatants from the War of 1812 buried there, along with 58 Civil War veterans (\"the most of any cemetery in Morris County\") and a few dozen more from the Spanish-American War of 1898 and both World Wars.\n\n\"And one from Vietnam, only because his grandfather had some space here,\" he said. \"That's Billy Ford. He just fell over,\" Titus said, pointing to one toppled stone. \"He's a Civil War veteran. He's got two brothers in here. I definitely want to restore that.\"\n\nNearby were some of the nearly three dozen broken headstones he has restored over the past year, using a tripod-mounted joist to raise the stones, which can weigh 600 pounds or more. Working by himself, Titus broke a rib a month ago just transporting one stone on a dolly and leaning over too far.\n\n\"Keith doesn't always wait for someone to help him,\" said Paul Wood, a friend and another dedicated volunteer who helps to care for the graveyard on weekends with his wife, Barbara.\n\nTitus shook off the pain after a few days. \"The doctor wanted to give me one of those opioid painkillers. I said no. I'm nuts enough without that [stuff].\"\n\n'Sold out since the Civil War'\n\nThe Dover Cemetery Association owns the property and authorizes burials when possible, but \"it has been sold out since the Civil War,\" Titus said. The rare burial now takes place only if someone can produce a deed for an open plot. \"I tell them no deed, you ain't getting in,\" he said. \"Cemeteries have obligations.\"\n\nAn exception was made in 2017 when the body of a baby girl was discovered in a recycling facility in neighboring Mine Hill. \"They didn't even have a name, so they called her Baby Mary,\" Titus said.\n\nThe Cemetery Association has no money, so Titus is out of pocket an estimated $31,000 over the past three years for his chosen mission. The tripod hoist alone cost $4,000. \"I wanted it, like a 5-year-old wants a toy,\" he said with a smile.\n\nHe pointed to tubes of a special epoxy made for mending gravestones. \"They cost about $100 apiece. I don't know how many of those I've bought.\"\n\nThe town has chipped in a bit, recently agreeing to mow the grass outside the gates along Orchard Street. Municipal workers help remove leaves in the fall after Titus blows them out of all the nooks and crannies. A local Home Depot, he said, donated a snowblower.\n\nThe Woods stop by regularly and help to mow on the weekends and do whatever else they can.\n\nThe rest comes from the Keith Titus retirement fund.\n\n\"Money is meant to be spent,\" said Titus, who never married and still lives alone in the Dover house where he grew up. \"I think it's important to honor the people who really built this town. But whether they were a congressman or an ironworker, I don't discriminate.\"\n\nMany of the graves are collected in gated plots featuring the names of the prominent families that built up Dover from its early roots as an iron mining outpost. There are names like Baker, \"who built the Baker Building and Baker Theatre,\" and Hurd, \"who donated land for the park\" that still bears their name, Titus explained.\n\nFounders, pilot and musical pioneer\n\nElected leaders buried at Orchard Street include former Mayors Anson Segur (1871-73) and Horace Dunham (1891-93), whose marble mausoleum was vandalized, creating yet another restoration project for Titus. Not far from the Dunham mausoleum lies William F. Birch, who represented Dover in the U.S. Congress from 1918 to 1919 after serving as a town councilman.\n\nTitus himself was part of a Republican majority that ran Dover a generation or two ago before the community evolved into one of Morris County's few Democratic strongholds. \"You won't find a lot of Democrats buried here, I can tell you that,\" Titus joked.\n\nOther family plots were reserved for those who gained their wealth from the iron-mining industry in the region, which dates back to the early 18th century.\n\n\"All those mine sinkholes you hear about on Route 80, those people are all buried here,\" Titus said.\n\nThe graves of residents and military veterans of neighboring Wharton can also be found on Orchard Street. The Wharton American Legion regularly visits the cemetery on Memorial Day for a ceremonial 21-gun salute.\n\nAlso interred at Orchard Street: \"Uncle Byram\" Pruden, a War of 1812 veteran believed to be the first captain to helm a boat on the Morris Canal, and Joseph Kekuku, inventor of the steel guitar. Born in Hawaii, he eventually made his way to Morristown, where he died in 1932. His Dover plot is marked by a small tombstone and a memorial bench.\n\nOrchard Street Gatehouse initiative\n\nNeither the cemetery nor Titus has the kind of money to tackle the biggest restoration needed at the Orchard Street Cemetery: repairs to a historic gatehouse that was built in 1875 and used as a place to store bodies in the winter before the spring thaw made the ground soft enough to dig.\n\n\"They didn't have backhoes back in the day,\" Titus said.\n\nThe small structure is built of sturdy cedar that has not deteriorated, but its brick-and-stone foundation is collapsing.\n\nTo that end, Titus and the Woods in 2019 teamed up to establish the nonprofit Orchard Street Historical Gatehouse Association to qualify for restoration grant money. They have already obtained two $5,000 grants from the county to fund a historical register application and other preliminary work.\n\n“The Orchard Street Cemetery and Gatehouse is more than a burial ground,\" said county Commissioner Deputy Director Stephen Shaw. \"It's a living chronicle of our community’s history, with generations of stories etched in stone. Thanks to dedicated volunteers like Keith Titus and Paul and Barbara Wood, who have painstakingly restored many of the damaged stones by hand, we’re not just preserving the past — we’re making it accessible and meaningful for future generations.\"\n\nPaul Wood said he and his wife, who is president of the association, handle a lot of the paperwork, communications, and grant-writing chores. They hope to apply for larger grants to fund the restoration, which Titus estimated will exceed $300,000.\n\nBut day-to-day, the sweat equity mostly belongs to Titus. \"I just like it here,\" he said again.\n\n\"From spring to fall he's pretty much there every day the weather's good,\" said Paul Wood, a woodworking teacher at Roxbury High School. \"We're down there cutting grass from now until November, but there's no way we can do as much as he does.\"\n\nBut volunteer work alone won't pay for the gatehouse restoration.\n\n\"We're hoping for that grant money,\" Titus said. \"But if anyone wants to donate ...\"

North Jersey cemetery is home to 125 veterans from six wars. Meet the volunteers mending it

Keith Titus, a retired Dover accountant, volunteers at the historic Orchard Street Cemetery in Dover, New Jersey, maintaining and restoring the burial ground for over 3,500 graves. The cemetery contains 125 veterans from six wars, including notable figures like a congressman and inventor of the steel guitar. Titus undertakes restoration projects, including repairing broken headstones and a collapsing gatehouse, while the Dover Cemetery Association manages burials. A 2017 discovery of a baby girl, named Baby Mary, led to her burial there.