The first Europeans to settle in the Princeton area were six Quaker families who built their homes near the Stony Brook around 1696.

In 1709 Benjamin Clark deeded nine and three-fifths acres in trust to Richard Stockton and others to establish a Friends meeting house and burial ground.

Though tall hardwood trees of the Princeton Battlefield State Park and Institute Woods cover those fields today, the meeting house offered a clear line of sight to the opening skirmish at William Clarke's orchard.

[6] Friends traditionally expressed their commitments to simplicity and the equality of all persons by discouraging elaborate grave markers.

Historical tradition of Quakers at the time was to place a simple unmarked stone marker at each grave site.