Ruins in limelight that shed light on earliest Chinese immigrants in eastern U.S.

Belleville would be one of numerous ordinary townships across the United States that might go unnoticed without this particular feature.

With the Dutch Reformed Church, Belleville, which falls under jurisdiction of the U.S. state of New Jersey and is about 16 kilometers away from Manhattan of New York City, has caught a lot of attention in recent days for keeping ruins and records that have testified activities of earliest Chinese immigrants in the eastern areas of the United States.

Michael Perrone, president of Belleville Historical Society, said the Dutch Reformed Church, which was first built in 1697 and rebuilt in 1853, sustained severe damages by two hurricanes in recent years, with its basement being flooded.

When workers did repairs to the church, they found from beneath the church basement plenty of sediments believed to be human remains, said Perrone, who concluded after some research work that the remains belonged to a group of Chinese immigrants who came to work in the U.S. East Coast after completing transcontinental railroads in 1869.

According to Perrone, the first group of 68 Chinese immigrants were hired by an ocean-going captain known as James Hervey, a rich man from Belleville, to work on his laundry, the largest of the kind in the country capable of having 6,000 shirts steam ironed a week. The Chinese immigrants set out from San Francisco, a port city on the U.S. Pacific Coast and arrived in Belleville on Sept. 20, 1870.

Local newspapers of the time carried woodcuts and information showing upon their arrival, Chinese immigrants had been getting along well with local residents: Dutch inhabitants in Belleville were invited to attend celebration of the first Chinese New Year in 1871; onlookers watched while the Chinese immigrants put up a show to set off fireworks on Feb 12, 1876, in commemoration of Chinese New Year, said Perrone.

Fifteen years into the arrival of the first group of the Chinese immigrants in Belleville, the population of the ethnic Chinese community peaked, with the number rising to 300, which was one tenth of the township's population at the time.

Some descendants of the Chinese immigrants later migrated to live or work in areas more urban and more closer to the shoreline such as Newark, New Jersey, and Manhattan of New York. As New York then banned large-scale gatherings, many people of Chinese descent made special trips to Belleville to celebrate the Chinese lunar New Year and worship ancestors.

It is unclear remains of how many Chinese immigrants were kept in the basement of the Dutch Reformed Church, which is just one of several churches in Belleville, said Perrone, who pledged to do more research on history of Chinese immigrants in eastern U.S.

He disclosed that he had submitted a proposal to authorities of Belleville township, now with a population of 35,000, applying for having a patch of land reserved inside the Dutch Reformed Church's cemetery where 68 officers and soldiers who were killed in the American War of Independence were buried.

If the proposal is approved, said Perrone, he wished that remains of the Chinese immigrants could be moved from the church basement to the inside of the cemetery and a memorial tablet would be installed with inscriptions commending contribution made by Chinese immigrants to the United States. Endit