YorksPast

I will be presenting a talk entitled “Private Burial Grounds, Discovering Their Stories,” at the monthly meeting of the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society.  This meeting will be held in the Meeting Hall of the York County Heritage Trust, at 250 East Market Street, York, Pennsylvania on Sunday February 3rd.  The business portion of the meeting begins at 2:15 PM and the program begins at about 2:30 PM.

South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Meetings are free and open to the public.  Winter meetings are canceled if roads are snow covered or icy, or if there is that possibility by the conclusion of the meeting.  To learn the status of a winter meeting that could be canceled because of the weather, please call Richard Konkel at 717-843-7043.  Continue reading for a description of this talk:

York County is home to many private burial grounds.  They are the final resting place for some of the earliest rural inhabitants.  These burial grounds were established because descendants of the landowners and in some cases the closest neighbors wanted their loved ones buried nearby.  Their stories are not strictly limited to a list of the people buried in these graveyards.

This is a presentation that emphasizes tracing the landowners of the private burial grounds back through time.  The graveyard caretakers are the recent landowners with no family connections to the burial grounds; sometimes theirs is an interesting story, although all to often theirs is a story of neglect.

This illustrated talk will present a case study of discovering the stories related to the Dosch Burial Grounds; which is located on several incarnations of Lauxmont Farms in Lower Windsor Township.  This is an interesting graveyard from all aspects.  Of the caretakers, one threatened to plow the graveyard under; one removed the gravestones, to potentially use in a building project, and one took great care in restoring the burial grounds.

The longest running landowner was the founder of Emigsville in Manchester Township; his in-laws are buried in the graveyard.  The relationship of the burials to each other and to the various landowners is the story of most interest to genealogists.  Nonetheless ALL these stories add interest to a family history.

This is my 116th post. An inventory of the general topics and locations that have been the subjects of my first 100 posts are presented in a 100-tile mosaic that breaks down these posts into seven general categories.