Dying cemeteries
Efforts continue to restore long-forgotten plots while others sit idleBy Mark Leberfinger, mleberfinger@altoonamirror.com
Article Photos
BOALSBURG - The sound of traffic is forgotten several hundred yards away from Route 45 in Harris Town-ship.
A bouncy trip through a farm field takes a carload of people to an isolated but prominent location on a Centre County farm.
It is the final earthly resting place for Mary Patterson Chambers Potter, the wife of Maj. Gen. James Potter - the farmer, land developer, soldier, judge, government leader and patriot who was the first white man to step foot in what is now Centre County.
And oh, beware of the cow patties, warns Judith Heald, president of the Centre County Genealogical Society.
Potter is buried in Old Stanford Cemetery, one of more than 1,300 cemeteries in Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Centre and Clearfield counties.
There are abandoned cemeteries. Owners are unknown. Vandals damage or steal the stones. Acid rain has eaten away tombstone engravings. Trees, brush and weeds overrun cemetery boundaries.
Those who are buried there do not receive the respect their families gave them - some more than 150 years ago.
In the case of Old Stanford Cemetery, restoration work includes brush and weed removal, tombstone repair and erecting a fence to keep out cows.
''This hasn't been a matter of disrespect but has been more of not getting around to it,'' Heald said.
That's where Reuben Kendall of State College comes into the picture.
The 16-year-old Boy Scout is using the cemetery to earn his Eagle Scout award through Troop 40, State College. He learned about the cemetery through Nancy Taylor, a member of his State College church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
''Some people might have relatives here,'' Reuben said. ''This work can resurface it and help people find what they need to find.''
Reuben and the Centre County genealogical and historical societies approached the landowner, who gave his permission to restore the cemetery. He has worked for the last several weeks, leading work crews on the project.
Reuben approaches the project with a great deal of respect.
''It's a lot different than taking a hike through the woods. You start to think what happened to them," he said. "You make a connection with the past. You're not just cleaning brush."
There are six or eight well-identified stones in Old Stanford and an additional four or five where people can make a ''pretty good guess'' at who is buried there, Heald said. The last burial at Old Stanford occurred in the late 1880s.
There is no record of the cemetery ever having a fence around it. That will change with a fence placed around the 180-by-90-foot area.
The Old Stanford project marks the first time the Centre County genealogical and historical societies have worked jointly on a project.
''We have common missions. This kind of landed in our laps. It's a very good project for both of us,'' Heald said.
Cemeteries chronicle history. A tombstone may be the only reminder of a person. Genealogists use cemeteries for family research. They also are places of contemplation and peace.
Genealogists and historians have been at the forefront of cemetery preservation. The work, however, is scattered throughout books and several Web sites. One research group, the Blair County Genealogical Society in Hollidaysburg, is selling 44 books of church and cemetery records.
There is no central directory of cemeteries in Pennsylvania, said Noel Strattan of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. A central directory would help developers know where a cemetery is before they commence a project.
The best way to preserve a cemetery is to make it known to the public, Strattan said.
''It sounds counterintuitive, but it seems to work,'' she said.
An Altoona-area cemetery is one that time and people forgot, the executive director of the Blair County Historical Society said.
''Most of the headstones were vandalized or stolen or thrown into [Mill Run],'' Jeannine Treese said.
No one knows who owns Allegheny Furnace Cemetery.
Logan Township has no record of the owner in its files, Code Enforcement Director Norman Bumbarger said.
According to a 1971 Altoona Mirror photo, at least six tombstones were in the cemetery behind the Mirror building. One tombstone remains.
A pair of indentations in the ground are reminders of other grave sites.
The first interment occurred there in 1812 - an infant of an Allegheny Furnace workman.
The furnace stopped production in 1819, but Elias Baker of Baker Mansion fame took over the facility. Furnace workers and their families were buried there.
Furnace carpenter John Burtnett, who also was buried in the cemetery, built many of the coffins. Viewings took place in the workmen's homes with burial occurring within 12 hours of death, the Mirror article states.
Burtnett, James Sellers and William H. Taylor served in the Civil War and are buried in the cemetery. Taylor, a black man, was a private in the 32nd U.S. Colored Troops, a unit formed in Pennsylvania.
The Baker family was buried in the cemetery, but the bodies were disinterred. They were buried in Fairview Cemetery.
A Pennsylvania National Guard unit restored the cemetery in 1971, but it fell out of favor, sight and memory.
Paul Eckenrode said he would make sure the Union Cemetery in Chest Springs, Cambria County, wouldn't fall out of favor, even if he wasn't paid to mow the grass.
''I'd do this no matter what. I live here,'' Eckenrode said, pointing to his home next to the cemetery. ''You can't see a graveyard grown up with weeds. I'm not going to look at high grass and tombstones all just broken or bent over.''
A stone monument honoring area settlers from 1776 to 1976 sits in the front of the cemetery.
Eckenrode has cared for the cemetery since 2003 as part of a contract he has with Chest Springs Borough to mow its recreation and other fields.
A Hollidaysburg cemetery has gone through spells of neglect but borough residents have worked during the past 15 years to maintain the site.
Civil War veterans are buried in the historic Union AME Cemetery on North Montgomery Street, Hollidaysburg.
One of those veterans, Henry Brown, fought with the 34th U.S. Colored Troops, the regiment memorialized in the movie ''Glory.''
Some of those buried there originally were interred in a cemetery near the home of Hollidaysburg Council member Amy Webster Sill and her husband, Darlee. The bodies were removed in the 1850s when entrepreneur Col. William Jack developed the land in what was once the Northwood section of Blair Township.
Before he became a Hollidaysburg council member, Joseph Dodson saw problems at the cemetery - most notably, the lack of a sign.
''I thought the cemetery should be recognized,'' he said.
The first sign Dodson was able to get for the cemetery faded, but a second sign is expected to last longer.
Hollidaysburg resident John Walker mowed the cemetery for years before he died. Several of the cemetery's neighbors now maintain it.
''I think anyone who takes a step forward to maintain cemeteries, it speaks volumes about them,'' Dodson said.
Webster Sill said she has found the cemetery deed.
"I'm trying to find someone to take it over. It's an important cemetery," she said.
The last owner was an African Methodist Episcopal, or AME church, but Webster Sill said she has not been able to locate a church representative about caring for the cemetery.
Don Feathers and Jim Snyder are two of the Blair County Genealogical Society volunteers working on a project that will preserve cemeteries' memories - long after they disappear from the face of the earth.
They are compiling a list of Blair County cemeteries - complete with driving directions from the society's headquarters on Scotch Valley Road and GPS coordinates.
The work started this spring with Feathers having about 120 cemeteries compiled before Snyder joined the effort. About 165 of the county's cemeteries have been documented.
''These cemeteries aren't going to last forever,'' Snyder said.
Blair County resident Archie Claar had been commissioned in the 1930s to work on cemetery lists for the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration, or WPA. Those lists and other compilations have been used for comparison.
''We tried to get it right the first time and get a good list,'' Snyder said.
Some grave markers Claar and others documented no longer exist. As a result, at least one cemetery is among the missing.
A Morrisons Cove genealogist in the mid-1950s found 25 to 30 tombstones in the Peck Station Cemetery between Roaring Spring and Martinsburg, but the stones are nowhere to be found.
''The bodies are still there, but we're told that people took the stones and used them for sidewalks and other uses,'' Snyder said.
Owners of the land where smaller, private cemeteries are located have been very cooperative when they are told about the genealogical society's effort, Snyder said.
Feathers and Snyder are equipped with a machete, pick, children's sidewalk chalk and other items when they go into the cemeteries. They have had to hack their way into some overgrown cemeteries, where they look to make sure it's a cemetery that matches their records. The chalk is used to bring out any inscription remaining on a stone, and rain will wash away the chalk.
Photos will be taken of all the located Blair County tombstones and be made available at the genealogical society, Snyder said.
''It will help the people with their research, especially for those who don't live around here,'' he said.
Mirror Staff Writer Mark Leberfinger is at 946-7462.
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graveguy
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08-19-08 8:35 AM
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Before any restoration or preservation work takes place on the stones themselves, I highly recommend that those involved in the project contact the Association for Gravestone Studies. ***********gravestonestudies**** They can offer many helpful tips and techniques to properly preserve old tombstones without doing further damage. Re-setting the stones in concrete is a major NO-NO and can do more harm then good, especially to older, brittle stones. One last thing, the unit in "GLORY" was the 54th Mass.
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zzzzipy
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08-18-08 10:12 AM
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Please save the resting beds of our ancestors!
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guttertroll
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08-18-08 8:10 AM
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?????????????????????
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