Mountain Laurel & Coal

Bentleyville Mayor Tim Jansante, Bentleyville Area Historical Society Vice President Randi Marodi & President Connie Gettings Bentleyville has roots that go all the way back to 1777 when founder Sheshbazzar Bentley purchased 1,077 acres on Pigeon Creek to build a mill. To start a village, Bentley rented, in 1790, 26 lots near the mill, located where Fox’s Pizza stands today. But it wasn’t until 1816 that his son, also named Sheshbazzar, established a village known initially as Bentleysville (sic). Since then, numerous generations of residents have come and gone, often leaving gaps in the historical record and questions that continue to baffle the local historical society. One such question concerns a small plot of land along Main Street in the middle of town that many current residents know little about. It’s a small plot of land currently confounding the Bentleyville Area Historical Society members, including that of the town’s mayor, Tim Jansante. The issue came to light when, in...

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...