By Michael Mancuso for NJ Advance Media for NJ.com on April 28, 2022

More than 240 years ago, in Charleston, South Carolina, a 13-year-old African American boy named Friday Trueheart was separated from his mother Dinah, when their enslaver, the Rev. Oliver Hart, came north to New Jersey and took the young teen with him.

Oliver would become the new pastor at the Old School Baptist Church, which still stands on West Broad Street in Hopewell.

On Thursday, a Witness Stone — a permanent brass marker to memorialize an enslaved individual — was unveiled on the ground in front of the church by Truehart’s direct descendant and family matriarch Patricia True Payne. Continue reading.