Mary Ellis grave


The Mary Ellis grave is marked by an 1828 gravestone located in the parking lot of a Loew's movie theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The Mary Ellis grave is one of several on the small plot, all the interred being interrelated.
After Mary Ellis's burial, the family home, and property eventually became the site for the Great Eastern Discount Department Store and, after that went out of business in the early-to-mid-1970s, the Route 1 Flea Market. Currently, and since about the late 1990s, the site contains an AMC Theater.
The grave remained in what became a parking lot for many businesses. It rests about above the level of the parking lot ever since the site was re-graded for development.

Mary Ellis

Mary Ellis was a spinster in New Brunswick, New Jersey. According to oral tradition, she was seduced by a sea captain who vowed to return to marry her. He never returned and she would come to the spot where her grave now stands, each day, to look for his ship in the Raritan River in New Brunswick.
Her story has been suggested as the inspiration for the 1972 pop song "Brandy ". The lyrics tell of Brandy, a barmaid in a port town. She wins the admiration of many of the sailors, but cannot return their feelings — the love of her life was unwilling to abandon his true love, the sea.
However Elliot Lurie, lead guitarist for Looking Glass and writer/singer of the song, said in an interview that the lyrics were loosely based on a girl he knew in real life named "Randye" but he changed the name to "Brandy" to remove the ambiguity of the gender. While the stories may be similar, the song has nothing to do with Mary Ellis. “No, that’s an incredible coincidence,” he said. “I write fiction.”

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