1744 Saint James Graveyard

 

At the corner of what is now Pine Lane and West Center Street lies the remains of what has become the burial site for some of Lititz’s earliest converts to the teachings of Count Zinzendorf. The old St. James Church, a small, log structure also built on this plot of ground, was built in 1744 as a “union” church by the Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite settlers of Warwick Township. This church was the first public meeting place built after Zinzendorf’s first visit in 1742 and 12 years before the town of Lititz was established in 1756.

In 1905 Abraham R. Beck, noted Lititz educator and founder of The Beck Family School for Boys (now “Kadima Rehabilitation and Nursing at Lititz,” located at 125 S. Broad Street), wrote: “The Moravian Graveyards at Lititz, Pa. 1744- 1905.” His reference to plural “graveyards” included both the St. James and Lititz Moravian cemeteries.

The following is taken from Beck’s recorded history of the “old St. James Cemetery”:

“The first, or old, graveyard, a small tract a quarter of an acre or so in extent, is situated within the borough limit a short distance west of the junction of Broad and Centre Streets.  On its eastern boundary, two hundred feet back from the King’s Highway, in the woods, stood the log church which had been built by George Klein (on his land), John Bender, Jacob Scherzer, Hartmann Verdriess, Lutherans, supported by a number of adherents of the Reformed and Mennonite denominations, for the Rev. Lawrence Nyberg, a Swedish Lutheran minister of Lancaster, who subsequently united with the Moravians.  Consecrated on St. James Day, July 25, 1744, it was thenceforth called the St. James Church.  In 1749 the majority of these worshippers, who had been spiritually awakened by the preaching in this vicinity of Count Zinzendorf, in 1742, organized the Warwick (Moravian) Country Congregation, and in 1759 they united with the Lititz Congregation. With the completion of the new chapel (second story of the present parsonage) in 1763, the use of the St. James Church, except for occasional funeral services, was abandoned; but, the graveyard continued to be the burial place of the Warwick members until 1791, when they began to bury in the new graveyard (the present Moravian graveyard) although some of them were interred in the former plot as late as 1812. Later the remains of some few friendless persons, or vagrants, were buried there.

“When, in 1889, the trustees of that time, actuated by a praiseworthy motive, gave this old graveyard a complete renovation – eradicating a jungle of brambles, repairing the enclosure, and planting trees there – the tombstones, which had been taken up in leveling the ground, were relaid, in exact, straight, rows, to be sure, but with such indiscriminate misplacement that their true individual sites are now hopelessly lost; fortunately, the erring stones are covered to a depth of some inches with vegetable mould and grass.”

Although A.R. Beck noted “until 1791, when they began to bury in the new graveyard,” Lititz Moravian historical archives shows the following: “On November 6, 1758 at the funeral service of a 41-day-old infant named John, a son of Matthew and Barbara Baumgaertner born on September 26 in Lititz, the congregation assembled in front of the Gemeinhaus for the funeral address. As Bishop Matthaeus Hehl spoke he said they would begin their new graveyard with this first seed of grain.”  Young John Baumgaertner’s gravestone is visible in God’s Acre as the oldest readable marker. Therefore, there is a discrepancy of 33 years in these two accounts. However, Mr. Beck realized his error after the 1905 printing of his book and publicly corrected this difference.

The last recorded burial in the old St. James Cemetery, which at this time was known as The Warwick Graveyard, was that of Saunders Lovington from San Domingo, Haiti, who passed away in 1844.  Saunders was a black man for whom the San Domingo Creek was named. There are 182 burials recorded, 60 of them infants. Among the charter members of the St. James Church interred in the cemetery are five members of the Kiesel family, for whom the area of Kissel Hill in Warwick Township is named. Other familiar names associated with the history of Lititz and the Moravian Congregation are Bechtel, Bender, Diehm, Evans, Frey, Grosh, Huber, Johnson, Kling, Koch, Schmidt, Tshudy, Warner, Weidman and Williams.

The old cemetery has gone through some troubled times since its original use as a sacred spot. At one time the neighborhood children used the flat stones as bases for their pick-up ball games. Portions of the one-quarter acre of ground were fenced in and used as chicken yards by neighbors whose backyards bordered the graveyard.

Through the years, members of the Moravian Congregation sent teams of workers to clear the area and repair the gravestones. However, time had taken its toll, and the majority of the markers have become not only buried under grass and sod but unreadable.

In 1941 Mrs. Eugene Kreider, a lifelong member of the Lititz Moravian Congregation, had the old St. James Cemetery cleaned of debris and brush in memory of her late husband who was the church sexton for more than 40 years. She also had the chain link fence with a lock erected around the perimeter of the cemetery to keep vandalism at bay. At the southeast corner of the cemetery is a large boulder with a plaque also given by Mrs. Kreider.  The plaque reads as follows:

St. James Graveyard
begun 1744
by settlers who founded
a union church nearby
and later organized
the warwick (now Lititz)
moravian congregation

In the summer of 2013 the spirit of community pride was evident when a group of 40 people gathered at the St. James Cemetery to restore and beautify the grounds. Led by Lititz native Shawn Houchin, volunteers lifted the gravestones and moved them to a safe place until the area could be cleaned of debris and leveled to prepare for seeding. A specialist with ground-penetrating radar helped to locate buried tombstones that had been hidden underground for many years. This same technology was used to locate the foundation of St. James Church along the east end of the cemetery and also located another foundation of an unknown building on the southwest corner.

Through the years many mysteries revolved around this small plot of land owned by the Moravian Congregation. The exact location of the St. James Church had eluded Lititz historians, and many of the gravestones had become unreadable due to time and erosion. Bill Oehme, a member of the Moravian Congregation, came up with a unique method to expose the readings of some of the stones. He rubbed shaving cream on each individual stone then took a squeegee to remove it. The shaving cream settled into the grooves of the writings on the stones and identification could be made to reveal the name, date of birth, and date of death.

Lititz's oldest cemetery has once again become a beautiful, sacred place where visitors can sit and relax and reflect on the early settlers of 1744. Many of the people interred in the St. James cemetery were our Moravian forefathers and some of the first residents of our historic town.

~ by Charlene VanBrookhoven, CSJ, Spring 2010