It’s not every day that you discover an unknown and uncared-for cemetery, but I did and it only took me about 30 years. In the mid-1990s, I found a copy of Caldwell’s Atlas from 1876 which had a map of Bentleyville that listed a cemetery near the Methodist Church in Bentleyville. Interestingly, there wasn’t a cemetery there. I asked around, but no one seemed to know anything about a cemetery in the middle of town. Finally, I talked to someone who knew about it, but they dismissed it by saying that it was probably for "paupers.” I thought it had been paved over or something had been built on it and this was upsetting, to say the least. I didn’t really know how to figure out what had happened to the cemetery and to be honest, after a while, I kind of forgot about it. Then, last summer my daughter Abby and I were at an antique fair and I found a copy of the Caldwell’s Atlas map of Bentleyville. I bought it and when I took it home, I saw that cemetery again. Last month, I was t...
Family Stories from Southwestern Pennsylvania & Ohio