Cemetery tour explores passage of time
Linda Reese, a member of Genealogical Society of Southwestern Pennsylvania, points out some of the features of an old tombstone in Grove United Presbyterian Cemetery in West Middletown.
The passage of time is evident in Doddridge Cemetery in Independence Township. It’s a homestead cemetery, and the identities of some of those buried in it are now unknown.
AVELLA – Even though it’s just off Sugar Run Road, Doddridge Cemetery blends so easily into the landscape you would miss it unless you were looking for it.
The ground is covered in moss and crushed leaves, and no flowers decorate any of the tombstones. Some of them haven’t stood straight for decades, while others have toppled over entirely. There are about 25 graves in this small, homestead cemetery that have been identified. There are undoubtedly more, but the markers are long gone and the occupants are now unknown and will probably never be known.
It would be the perfect place to come around Halloween for a dose of the heebie-jeebies, but a handful of members of the Genealogical Society of Southwestern Pennsylvania were strolling through it in the sunny daylight that marked Saturday afternoon as part of a tour of cemeteries along Route 844 in Washington County.
This is the second time the Genealogical Society, which uses Citizens Library in Washington as its base, has embarked on a tour of local cemeteries; in the fall, they traveled along Route 40 and stopped at some of the historic cemeteries between Washington and West Alexander. Given the abundance of family cemeteries and church graveyards in the county, more tours are planned, according to Linda Reese, a member of the Genealogical Society who led Saturday’s tour.
The tour was about more than looking at stones, though there was plenty of that. The styles employed on older stones were explored, some of which were idiosyncratic based on the maker of the stone. But, as Reese pointed out, the stones inevitably tell stories, some of them heartbreaking. In Grove United Presbyterian Cemetery in West Middletown, for instance, she pointed to one stone on which the names of three children were engraved. They all died within the same week in April 1841, which suggests an epidemic swept through the area.
The stone that featured the names of the three children was still relatively well-preserved, but some of the stones from the same period are edging toward being illegible. Reese noted tombstones from the 1700s and 1800s have reached that state because they were crafted from sandstone and marble. Granite, which is more durable, became more commonly used in the 1900s.
Sherry Blackburn, vice president of the Genealogical Society, explained part of the reason she finds the cemetery tours so fascinating is her family has deep roots in the county, with her forefathers having settled in the area before the founding of the United States.
“A cemetery puts you in a certain place at a certain time,” Blackburn said.
The next meeting of the Genealogical Society is set for May 2 at 2 p.m. at Citizens Library. Another cemetery tour is planned for October.