Old Yellow Meeting House event scheduled for Sunday. UPPER FREEHOLD — The Old Yellow Meeting House, believed to be the oldest Baptist church structure in New Jersey, and its grounds are filled with history. Now, the Friends of the Old Yellow Meeting House are hoping to make that history more accessible. The group will hold an 87th annual church reunion Sunday. The event begins at 10 a.m. with an hourlong cemetery tour, followed by a worship service and picnic luncheon. The cemetery tour will be repeated following lunch, and a business meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m., according to organizer Bob Haver. The facility is located on Yellow Meeting House Road. As part of the celebration, three wayside signs will be unveiled, Mr. Haver said. The signs — purchased by the Friends and featuring artwork by local resident Alice Ely Wikoff — detail the history of the cemetery, the history of the meeting house, and the history of the parsonage and Baptist ministry. Mr. Haver said the Friends — which has approximately 300 members — plan to create pamphlets that can be left at the signs so people can take self-guided tours. "We're really trying to make it visitor friendly," Mr. Haver said. "You get a pretty good sense of the history just by looking at these signs." The meeting house dates back to 1737, and the site is owned by the Upper Freehold Baptist Church. The church now is located in Imlaystown. The Rev. Staton Bentley Jr., the pastor at Upper Freehold Baptist Church, will run the service. The Rev. George Simmons, pastor of Hornerstown Baptist Church, will deliver the sermon. Also participating will be the choirs from the First Baptist Church of Allentown and Memorial Baptist of Yardville. The Friends of the Old Yellow Meeting House Inc. began in 1974 as a spin-off of the Environmental Commission of Upper Freehold Township. The commission did an inventory of the township that included both land, water, and historical resources. It was discovered that the Old Yellow Meeting House, which was deteriorating and rarely maintained, was owned by the Upper Freehold Baptist Church. In 1975, the Friends of the Old Yellow Meeting House was chartered as a nonprofit organization and the building was put on the National Registry of Historic Places. The organization began raising money to restore the building in stages. The parsonage was restored in 1985 and the interior restored in 1991. Elizabeth Dey and John Fabiano, president of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society, will provide narration for the cemetery tour. Ms. Dey ran a similar tour for the 275th anniversary of the Allentown Presbyterian Church. "There's some well-known names there," Ms. Dey said about the Old Yellow Meeting House cemetery. "There are a lot of Coxs, Lawrences, and Holmes. There's a number of Revolutionary War soldiers; and a lot of Civil War soldiers, too." Ms. Dey said the tour will examine approximately 17 graves — down from the 30 she intended to discuss. "I've tried to tell the history of the yellow meeting house and of the Upper Freehold Baptist Church," she said. "I was just amazed there was that much information on people, that you can find all this." Most of Ms. Dey's research was done at the Allentown Public Library. "They really have a nice collection of books that tell about the history of Monmouth County and this area," she said. "The old (Allentown) Messengers were a great boon, too. "It's really fun what you can find out about people. You don't know how much of it is true, that's a guess. All you can do is report what you find." ©Packet Online 2002