Have you ever wondered where our early Skillmans are buried? The general answer to that question is New Jersey, and Somerset County in particular. However, clusters of Skillmans relocated in later generations to New York, Ohio and Indiana in a general northern and western migration. Surprisingly, few Skillmans migrated south. Now, of course, later generation Skillmans are buried in nearly every state. Note that Hamilton County, OH, was a hotbed of later Skillmans. There are only 123 Skillman graves listed in all of Pennsylvania, so the Ohio Skillmans apparently skipped right over Pennsylvania.

The best source of data on the graves of early Skillmans is findagrave.com, a wonderful website which was recently purchased by Ancestry.com, but for the moment it is still free to non-Ancestry.com members. Findagrave.com lists 417 Skillman graves in the state of New Jersey. Below are some data from findagrave.com on early Skillman burials. I have only included those cemeteries which contain ten or more Skillman burials, with the exception of the Beekman Cemetery, a small well-maintained private cemetery containing early Skillmans.

Name	City	County	State	Skillman Graves
Crown Hill Cemetery	Indianapolis	Marion	IN	19
Forest Hill Cemetery	Shelbyville	Shelby	IN	23
Amwell Ridge Cemetery	Ringoes	Hunterdon	NJ	17
Beekman Cemetery	Montgomery Twp.	Somerset	NJ	9
Blawenburg Reformed Church	Blawenburg	Somerset	NJ	38
Elm Ridge Cemetery	New Brunswick	Middlesex	NJ	18
Green-Wood Cemetery	Trenton	Mercer	NJ	14
Harlingen Reformed Church	Belle Mead	Somerset	NJ	26
Kingston Presbyterian Church	Kingston	Somerset	NJ	24
Mount Hope Cemetery	Lambertville	Hunterdon	NJ	38
Princeton Cemetery	Princeton	Mercer	NJ	33
Riverview Cemetery	Trenton	Mercer	NJ	19
Rocky Hill Cemetery	Rocky Hill	Somerset	NJ	21
Second English Presbyterian	Amwell	Hunterdon	NJ	10
Bemis Point Cemetery	Ellery Center	Chautauqua	NY	17
Green-Wood Cemetery	Brooklyn	Kings	NY	36
McDonough Union Cemetery	McDonough	Chenango	NY	27
Riverside Cemetery	Endicott (Union)	Broome	NY	23
Greenwood Cemetery	Hamilton	Butler	OH	13
New Lexington Cemetery	New Lexington	Perry	OH	15
Reading Protestant Cemetery	Reading	Hamilton	OH	15
Spring Grove Cemetery	Cincinnati	Hamilton	OH	56
West Branch Mill Creek	Colerain Twp.	Hamilton	OH	34

I had no idea there was such a large group of Skillmans in Lambertville, New Jersey, a charming town on the Delaware River. I suspect that each of the cemeteries listed above contain Skillmans almost exclusively descended from one of the five sons of Thomas2 Skillman from whom we are all descended. Without doing further research, it seems unlikely to me that two different lines of Skillmans would move together to a particular area or state. For example, all of the Skillmans in Riverside Cemetery in Endicott (Union), NY, are of my line and descended from Jacob5 (John4, Jacob3) Skillman.

John E Skillman III
President