slave burials The oldest part of Wenrich’s cemetery is on its east side.  From 1794 to 1857 the second place of worship stood to the west of that old cemetery.  In 1857 the third and present church building was erected to the east of the old cemetery and the area of the second building became a part of the cemetery.  From then on, the cemetery expanded to the west. “The well to do people among our early settlers had slaves.  When they died they had to be buried.  Many of these servants were buried on the outside of our old cemeteries.  Such is the case on these grounds, where slaves were buried on the outside of the cemetery fence, and west of the second place of worship. These fifty feet west of the old church site, up to the Meese plot, was the first addition to the old cemetery.  In this strip the slaves of Colonial days were buried, that were brought to the church for burial.  Nearly every grave that was dug, the grave diggers came on human bones, buried long ago.  A full grown body was dug upon in Oct 1938.”  -----from “Records of Wenrich’s Reformed Church (now St. Thomas United Church of Christ), Lowere Paxton Township. Cemetery Records; Baptisms, 1791-1938”  Nevin Moyer and Earle W. Lingle, n.d. The photo shows the plot of ground between the site of the second church and the Meese plot, and is the land in which the slaves were originally buried.  It is currently filled with graves dating from the 1840’s to the early 1900’s – graves that were dug at least 50 to 100 years after the last slave burials here.  The location of this plot was determined using the description given above:  “These fifty feet west of the old church site, up to the Meese plot.”  Fortunately, the exact location of the second place of worship is marked by a large stone in the cemetery.  The Meese plot, which marks the western boundary of the original slave burial grounds, is about twenty paces, roughly fifty feet, west of this marker.  The Meese memorial stone is visible in the photograph.  It’s the tall column near the top of the hill in the right third of the photograph. None of the slaves buried here are identified in any known records, and it’s not known how many slaves are buried here.  The age of the burial grounds and the importance of this church to the colonial community tends to support the belief that a large number of slaves are interred here in unmarked graves.  The most likely period of time in which slaves were brought here for burial is in the years from the church’s founding in 1730 until the building of the second church in 1793-4.  Because attitudes towards slavery changed drastically during the Revolution, and especially after 1780 when the Gradual Emancipation law was passed, it is unlikely that many slaves were buried at Wenrich’s Church after the 1770’s.  That half century, however, from 1730 to 1780, encompasses a time when hundreds of slaves toiled in the surrounding fields and lived in the communities served by this church. -       the source for this text is the afrolumensproject, central Pennsylvania African American history for everyone. [Back to churchyard/cemetery ]