6th Annual Demarest Day

The town of Demarest is holding their annual Demarest Day on September 24 to celebrate its lenghty history and honor the descendents of the Demarest family.

The current Facebook group has about 441 members with approximately 400 Demarests. The group is seeking as many descendants of the Demarest/Demaree/DesMarets as possible to attend.

Authors of  "A Huguenot on the Hackensack: David Demarest and his Legacy", David and John Major will attend Demarest Day.

Born in Beauchamps, France, into a Huguenot family, David Demarest (originally des Marets) left France during religious upheavals and married Marie Sohier in Middelburg, the Netherlands, in 1643. They had seven children. The family immigrated to New Amsterdam in 1663. Demarest was a prominent citizen, supporter of the French Church, and magistrate under Dutch and English rule on Staten Island and in the village of Harlem.

He led a group that in 1677 purchased the "French Patent" on the east bank of the Hackensack from the Tappan Indians with the assent of the proprietor, Sir George Carteret. Originally about two thousand acres, this land stretched from New Bridge east to the Palisades and several miles north along the Hackensack. The Demarests and other French Huguenot and Dutch families settled on this land as farmers, millers, and tradesmen.

Demarest’s descendants played important roles in the Reformed Church and the Revolutionary War, and in economic development in Bergen County through the twentieth century. The Demarest House at may date from the second or third generation on the Hackensack; it is owned by the Blauvelt Demarest Foundation, which supports educational, research, and restoration activities relating to Bergen County. Demarest, New Jersey, is named for a descendant.

The name of Demarest dates from the 1667 homestead of David des Marets, a French settler who purchased land along the Hackensack River in present-day River Edge. David des Marets’s grandson Samuel established a home and gristmill within the present-day boundaries of Demarest.

When the Northern Railroad of New Jersey arrived in 1859, the local stop was Demarest Station, named for Ralph Demarest, a director of the railroad, an assemblyman (1855-1856), and a state senator (1860-1862). A larger station, designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, was built in 1872 of stone quarried from the Palisades. Before the arrival of the railroad, Demarest had an agricultural economy.

Afterward, the area boasted a distillery, an optical factory, a hotel, and a trotting track. Originally part of the township of Harrington, Demarest seceded in 1903 and organized as a borough. By then, the mills and factories had closed and the hotel had burned down. Residential development supplanted farming and many residents commuted to New York City.