The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Most people have never heard of Martha Garretson Place, but the former East Millstone resident earned some degree of infamy in her day.
Place is the first woman electrocuted in New York state, a distinction she earned in 1899 after being found guilty of the 1898 murder of her step-daughter, and the attempted murder of her husband in their Brooklyn brownstone.
Place was buried in the Cedar Hill Cemetery in East Millstone, and her grave was one of 11 included in a walking tour of the cemetery held Nov. 15 by the East Millstone Historical Society.
Led by township historian Bob Mettler, the approximately 25 attendees were treated to stories about some of the township’s more notable residents.
Place’s burial is also the source of local myth, which actually has three versions, according to Mettler. The procession passed a local school and Mettler said, depending on which version one believes, the students were dismissed for the day, the students were told to turn their backs on the procession as it passed or the students were admonished as the procession passed with, “See what happens to bad boys and girls?”
Also on the tour were graves of Dr. Joseph Howard Cooper, a local physician; Walter Herubin, who died in World War II, and Joseph Howell, who fought in the War of 1812, among others.
“It’s a real ‘area’ cemetery,” Mettler said of the property. “We have people that came from other places but they had something to do with the Millstone Valley and Franklin.”
