This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------36EE153568DC Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Allright everyone, I give up. Why do some messages appear in this elongated format? Logan is not the only one one - there have been others here and there on other lists, so stretched out that you can't read it without a great deal of clicking (which I don't usually bother with). I've even tried printing it out both ways, but never get anything more than the end section of *some* lines. I'm not up on the technical end of computers, so would appreciate someone explaining!! Thanks, Barb Logan - sorry for using you as an example, but you were handy. --------------36EE153568DC Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from fp-1.rootsweb.com (unverified [207.113.233.233]) by tempest.nac.net (Rockliffe SMTPRA 2.1.6) with ESMTP id <[email protected]> for <[email protected]>; Sun, 02 Aug 1998 07:27:17 -0400 Received: (from [email protected]) by fp-1.rootsweb.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA04323; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 04:27:08 -0700 (PDT) Resent-Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 04:27:08 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <[email protected]> X-Sender: [email protected] X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (16) Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 07:18:34 Old-To: [email protected] From: Asta <[email protected]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by fp-1.rootsweb.com id EAA03816 Subject: [PASNYDER-L] Cemetery Search Story Resent-Message-ID: <"jjoYc.A.lCB.K0Ex1"@fp-1.rootsweb.com> To: [email protected] Resent-From: [email protected] X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/210 X-Loop: [email protected] Precedence: list Resent-Sender: [email protected] Hi, gang. First, I want to express my appreciation to all of you who sent surname queries for our new surname query page at the Snyder County PAGenWeb site. Thanks especially to most of you who took the time to read the instructions on how to submit a properly formatted query. It has saved me a great of time and helped me post your queries in a more timely manner. I'd like to share some experiences I had yesterday when I visited southern Snyder County. As some of you may know, I have been assisting my friend Tom Finsterbush in updating and correcting George W. Wagenseller's "Snyder County Tombstone Inscriptions" for a project for the Snyder and Union County Historical Societies. Tom and I spent all day yesterday updating some important and hidden cemeteries in Chapman and Union Townships and thought you might be interested in what we found. We began our trek by travelling from Middleburg south on Route 104. Before reaching Meiserville, we turned east onto Paradise Church Road and drove to Paradise Church to check the cemetery there. The white vinyl sided church was situated on a gentle slope on our right eminating from a cornfield. Just beyond the church was the cemetery, flanked by several large maple trees. Having spent the entire morning in Union County working on cemeteries there, we sat under the trees and had our lunch we packed. There was a cool breeze blowing as Tom shared with me the fact that Paradise Church was originally a United Brethren Church, and now is an active United Methodist Church. After our lunch, we examined the tombstones and discovered that the burials in the upper right hand corner of the cemetery began in the early 1850's, about a decade before the Paradise Church was founded. There were many families with the surnames HERROLD, ARNOLD, REICHENBACH, SHAFFER. Two United Brethren pastor! s ! were buried there: one Rev. Samuel W. HERROLD and a Rev. John SHAFFER, the latter's stone had fallen over onto its back and was partially obscured by lawn trimmings. After we finished our transcription work and corrected and updated Wagenseller, I asked Tom to see if there was a cemetery at McKees Half Falls as someone had e-mailed me and asked me about a cemetery there. He said there was a cemetery and thought he had shown it to me. We drove to the corner of McKee's Road and Old Trail (the original Route 15) and parked. There was a small corner of a field grown over with high weeds. I remembered he took me there two years before. The field corner once held Trinity United Brethren Church but the building was now long gone. All that was left was the cemetery. I remember seeing a few stones standing there, the field freshly mowed, from two years before. But now, it was grown over, and not a stone was left standing. They had been all removed. We thanked God that we had transcribed the inscriptions two years before. The anonymous bodies lying in the field were mute testimony to the lack of appreciation by us moderns for the debt we owe to ou! r ! forebears. I got back into my truck feeling depressed and angry that someone could do such a thing. But Tom had another agenda. He wanted to find the elusive Brubaker cemetery we couldn't find two years ago. So we drove to Hoffer Road and drove up and down between Hoffer and McKee's Road trying to find the "next ridge" a Mennonite had told us about when we were looking for the Rine burial site two years ago. We found the Rine site, but couldn't find the Brubaker Cemetery on the next ridge. After travelling up and down Hoffer Road for while, I decided to stop along the road at a modern farm to ask for information. Tom got out and asked the woman in the house, who directed us to "her man" (a euphemism for her husband) who was out behind the barn. So we drove to behind the barn where a heavy set man was talking with another Mennonite. Tom got out of the truck and asked them questions. I could tell from Tom's quick stepping back to the truck that he knew exactly where it was. So we traveled out to Route 15 and went north until we got to Hilsher's store at Independence and turned left on Peffer Valley Road. We made an immediate left on Old Trail south to McNess Road and turned right onto it. We traveled up the winding road looking for the cemetery until we got to just about the end of the McNess Road, where it intersects with Peffer Valley Road. We didn't see it, so we turned around and went back down McNess. Immediately to our right, enclosed by a white fence, and situated next to a truck garage was a small cemetery. We went to the front gate and went inside. There were two rows of stones to our right, all of the homemade out of concrete and plaster. Most were for children who died in infancy, a few of some older persons. But they were all new, dating from the 1960's through 1980's and we knew that Brubaker cemetery was around for a lot longer. A Mennonite on a horse drawn wagon with two boys sitting on the tail gate came from behind the truck ga! ra! ge. We waved but Tom hollered for the man to stop. The Mennonite obliged when Tom asked what the name of the cemetery was. The man scratched his whiskers and said that it was probably the Hoover cemetery (as there were a few HOOVERs buried it). He added that it was the burial place of members of the Nall Hoover Mennonite church group which moved a few years back to Kentucky. Nall? Tom asked him to spell it:N-O-A-H. Noah, not Nall. Pennsylvania Dutch again. Tom asked him about the Brubaker Cemetery. We had passed that one too. So after recording the inscriptions at the new Hoover Cemetery we backtracked McNess Road to where it intersected with Old Trail at a farm. At the red barn we parked and saw a white hand painted sign pointing up the knob adjacent to McNess Road: Brubaker Cemetery. We traipsed up the knob, overgrown with weeds and with copious amounts of poison ivy thrown in. Standing near the top of the knob, we looked for the cemetery, when through the weeds we could see the outline of a white pipe fence. We walked there and found a large mailbox in which there were copies of all of the known tombstone inscriptions and a wonderful history of the Mennonite presence in Snyder County. Tom and I each took one and proceeded to copy the inscriptions arranged in six or seven neat rows. We corrected Wagenseller again, as well as the papers we found there, and discovered that three Mennonite bishops were buried there. No wonder most everyone we talked to in southern Snyder County knew about Brubaker! c! emetery: it was the final resting place of their spiritual ancestors (as most folks we talked to were either Amish or Mennonite). Some of the tombstones were engraved, weathered marble, and others were engraved field stones. The writer of the cemetery history said that as some stones were becoming illegible, the writer had replaced them with engraved field stones of his own making, unfortunately omitting information on the original stones. Nevertheless, we finished our task and started for home. On the way back north, we went up Product Road at the Susquehanna Mennonite Church. Tom told me that the church used to be known as the HERROLD church, but didn't know its denomination. As we continued up the road, we passed Stouffer's Mennonite Church, the oldest one in the county, replete with many STAHL burials in its large cemetery. Thus ended our trek. We had now located all known Snyder County cemeteries and had finished our work. All that was left was to check the transcriptions for several of the larger cemeteries in the county. Most of the work has been deposited with both the Snyder and the Union County Historical Societies. Tom also wants to check Dressler's Ridge and the Richfield area as many south western Snyder County people were buried there as well. The project has been a big one, and we hope to uncover any other burial sites long forgotten by all but the sharpest oldtimers. Logan Garth Swanger Snyder Co PAGenWeb County Coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~pasnyder PASNYDER-L List Owner [email protected] Member: National Genealogical Society, Snyder County Historical Society (Life Member), Union County Historical Society Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Pioneers South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society --------------36EE153568DC--