What’s the story of that fenced-in graveyard atop a hill near I-83?
Prospect Hill Cemetery’s Soldiers Circle marks the dead who succumbed at the U.S. Military Hospital at Penn Park in the Civil War. The York County Heritage Trust has information on that Manchester Township cemetery and a host of other burial sites throughout York County. Background posts: Two York County, Pa., union churches vestiges of bygone era, Not all rebel wounded suffered at Gettysburg and Footballer Lenny Moore has strong roots in York and White Roses mark interstate’s entry into York.
Someone posting on York Town Square’s sister site The Exchange asked about a cemetery in the Shrewsbury area.
Speaking off the top of her head, Lila Fourhman-Shaull, the area’s foremost cemetery sleuth and archivist at the York County Heritage Trust, believed the cemetery might be the Keeney burial ground.
But on the larger question of how you go about identifying such cemeteries, here’s Lila’s assessment: …
– An ADC map in the York County Heritage Trust archives identifies York County cemeteries, using a Heritage Trust number assigned to each cemetery.
– An index – available from a database created by Lila – lfourhman-shaull@yorkheritage.org – is arranged three ways: by name, township and number.
– About 370 cemeteries have been identified, and Lila has a listing of about 540 different
names for the cemeteries. “Some of the cemeteries went by at least 4 different names over the years,” she said. Historical Society abstractions from the 1930s for these cemeteries are in book form, row per row by each cemetery. That same information is typed on cards and included with family file collections.
A few years ago, Lila took time out from tramping around York County in search of obscure cemeteries to write a booklet on interesting burial sites at Prospect Hill Cemetery. “A Walking Tour of Civil War-Era Residents at Prospect Hill Cemetery, York, Pa.” is available at the York County Heritage Trust, 250 E. Market St.
