Week #4’s headstone is found in Maytown in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one headstone in memory of ten people.
The Inscription tells the story:
KNOWN NOW BUT TO GOD
BURIED BENEATH THIS GROUND ARE THE BONES
OF TEN PERSONS WHOSE UNMARKED GRAVES WERE
UNCOVERED DURING THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE
CHURCH ELEVATOR AND SOCIAL HALL EXPANSION.
THEY HAVE BEEN REBURIED HERE WITH LOVE BY
THEIR HEIRS THE PEOPLE OF ST. JOHN’S IN THE YEAR
OF OUR LORD AND THEIRS 1988 EZEKIEL 37: 1- 14
This was found at Maytown Union Cemetery, adjacent to St. John’s Lutheran Church. This stone impressed me with the caring of yet another congregation in Lancaster County.
Linda’s Headstone of the Week, Week #3
It’s nice to know people out there still care!
What an interesting headstone of the week — and what a touching story. Any notion of the time-frame from which these burials date?
TERRY
Well, Terry, according to their website:
http://www.stjohnsmaytown.com/
the Church is over 238 years old. I doubt anybody knows when these bodies were buried. It’s a beautiful cemetery and has current burials as well as the old section. I plan to go back and take more pictures and probably do a blog on it. I was so impressed with this headstone. I’m glad you were, too.
Linda
Dear Linda,
I just stumbled upon your website and am pleased that anyone noticed the care with which we re-interred the remains of the ancestors we unexpectedly uncovered in our building project. I confess to being the author of the quoted epitath. I have one small correction , however, to note, and that is that the gravesite lies within our church’s cemetery, NOT the contiguous “Maytown Union Cemetery”.
Most people don’t realize that there are actually two cemeteries adjacent to one another; one (ours) related to the church, and founded in circa 1767, and the other (Union) founded in the 1870’s, largely by our people but established on a secular basis. Our cemetery largely “filled up” by the middle of the nineteenth century, necessitating the expansion. I have done a map of the Lutheran portion and compiled a book listing decipherable epitaths. I have also, this summer, spent lots of time up-dating the burial records of the Union Cemetery. Thanks again for your interest in what we are doing in Maytown.
Bob Lescallette, Pastor of St. John’s since 1978