St. Mary’s Cemetery is reported as the oldest Catholic cemetery in southern New Jersey, it was also the site of a wooden frame church built in 1827. Catholic workers at the Batsto Furnace and Iron Works built the church on the land donated by their employer, Jesse Richards. St. Mary’s of the Assumption, also known as St. Mary’s in the Pines was the first Catholic Church in what is now known as Pleasant Mills in Atlantic County. The last church service was held was in December of 1860, boarded up in 1865, and completely abandoned in 1885. The church building was destroyed in April 1900 by a forest fire, but the graveyard with its thirty-five headstones dating back to 1835 remains with the last burial taking place in 1906. The cemetery is the final resting place for many of the Revolutionary War-era workers from Batsto and Franz and Mary Froehlinger, parents of the late Joseph Fralinger, originator of Atlantic City's famous Fralinger’s Salt Water Taffy.