The Civil War Soldiers Monument in the cemetery behind the First Presbyterian Church building complex is one of New Jersey’s earliest Civil War monuments. On June 3, 1865, Reverend Joseph Gaston Symmes of the First Presbyterian Church proposed it in memory of soldiers from the Townships of Cranbury, Monroe, and South Brunswick who gave their lives to help preserve the Union, and the Methodist and Second Presbyterian Churches of Cranbury also supported the project. Governor Marcus War dedicated the marble monument on August 1, 1866. Seventy names of soldiers from several New Jersey regiments are carved on it, including men from Company H of the NJ 14th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, formed in Cranbury in August 1862, the unit in which the largest number of Cranburians served and which had the largest casualty rate in its regiment; other Cranbury soldiers enlisted in units such as Company B of the NJ 28th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The First Presbyterian congregation in Cranbury was formed in 1738, a meeting house was built in 1740 on the highest point of land in the oldest section of the cemetery, King George II granted the church a Royal Charter in 1750, one hundred fifty acres were purchased for the Parsonage Plantation in 1759, a new church was built in 1788 on the site of the present church building, it was rebuilt in 1839 in Greek Revival style, and an extensive rebuilding in 1859 enlarged it from three to five windows on each side. In 1740, Cranbury resident James Rochead conveyed five acres of land for a cemetery near the Presbyterian meeting house. The oldest section of Brainerd Cemetery contains approximately 1,000 markers, most of them marble tablets of the eighteenth century, and about 125 brownstone markers from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century still exist. In 1858, as more cemetery space was needed, the western section was laid out in a formal landscaped grid pattern. The cemetery was named for David Brainerd, who preached to local Lenape Indians during the summer of 1745, and it contains the monuments and headstones of church pastors, early settlers, and those who served the country during and since the American Revolution.