Sunday Pastries With the Dead 40
An est. 1745 Pennsylvania cemetery with a bloody past.
Today’s Pennsylvania cemetery is a stark reminder of the devastating effects of colonialism, on all sides. Within this small plot of about 250 interred individuals is the first woman in the area to be killed by Native Americans.
The cemetery holds the remains of the county’s initial Scottish-Irish settlers. They were immigrants from the province of Ulster who arrived in Philadelphia and traveled north to the area in 1728. Inside the plot’s stone walls are notable early local figures including generals, esquires, doctors, ministers, and war veterans.
The graveyard was established around 1745 (the date of the first recorded burial), and the nearby church was built in 1813 (its previous iterations, log structures, were erected in 1731 and 1772).
The most well-known individual here is sadly emblematic of the bloody history upon which this country was built. Jane Kerr Horner, for whom the cemetery is now named, hailed from Berry County, Ireland and settled in this part of Pennsylvania with her husband James in 1734, where they raised their seven children. On October 8, 1763, she was walking from her home to the local hotel to get hot coals for her fire when she crossed paths with a group of Native Americans arriving to exact revenge on locals who had previously stolen from and attempted to murder them. The exact names of these locals differ depending on the source, but tensions between Native Americans and white settlers were already high in the wake of the French and Indian War and the infamous Walking Purchase aka “land swindle” of 1737, in which William Penn’s heirs cheated Pennsylvania’s Native Americans.
Jane was tomahawked to death to prevent her from warning others in town; about 20 other villagers were also killed. Several stories have been passed down—one says Jane’s body was buried in a rolled up carpet due to its mutilated state, while another says her husband locked himself in the church with her remains as he built her coffin.
Many of the old records about this event give no context as to why the Native Americans retaliated and use inflammatory language (one such offensive adjective—savage—is carved on Jane’s headstone). The more historical research one does, the clearer it is that the “facts” of the past bend to the whims and biases of those who relay them. You must look at a historical marker or record through the perceptions of those who wrote it, those who it was written for, and those who it was meant to benefit. Murder is never justified, nor—in this case—are the egregious actions that cause it, but no matter who is culpable, those caught in the middle are almost always the ones who suffer. All of us (in America and beyond) are living on stolen land, and our history tends to reverse or erase that fact. As I stood at the foot of Jane’s ledger stone, I sent my sympathy to her and to the indigenous Lenape people of this region who were brutalized alongside her.
Legend has it that Jane was close friends with some of the local Lenape, a few of whom are said to be buried beneath jagged rocks in the far right corner of the cemetery.
The oldest remaining stone in the plot belongs to James King, who died in 1745. There are many other gorgeous 1700s-era markers, as well—they vary from the traditional slate to sandstone to white marble, and a few are a striking deep blue-grey veined marble (though after some furious research, it could also be a form of soapstone that was quarried in Philadelphia or what’s known as “Pennsylvania Clouded Limestone”—I’m still working on my stone identification!)
A notable recurring carved tympanum symbol on many of the plot’s mid-1800s marble headstones is this lovely fern (which stand for humbleness and sincerity) fringed banner bearing the word SACRED arched over sheaths of wheat (symbolizing a long and prosperous life).
This past October, I happened upon my first mistake stone—there’s a fascinating version of one here, as well. This is the first reused stone I’ve found—on the front side is the deceased’s name, birth, and death dates; on the back side is the same information for a different person, crudely carved away. It’s clear from the somewhat-legible remaining letters and numbers that the removed name and birth/death dates are different from those of the interred. Perhaps John Horner’s family didn’t have the money for a new stone, or someone else was supposed to be buried with him but was moved elsewhere.
Until 2008, the cemetery was abandoned and in terrible disrepair; a wonderful group of locals worked to restore it, and it’s in gorgeous shape now. The headstones that were irreversibly broken sit lined atop the exterior stone wall.
Based on the fact that most of these shards seem to be small markers solely bearing the deceased’s initials, I’m guessing they’re oft-damaged and displaced footstones. There are a few excellent examples of them appearing intact alongside their matching headstones in this cemetery (another rarity). I wrote a bit more about footstones in this post.
I made a donation to the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania in honor of the indigenous people discussed in this post, and whose land I currently reside on. I encourage you to research the early inhabitants of your own region and do the same.
Until next Sunday, fellow taphophiles!