Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

I’ve always liked cemeteries. Saying that has never gotten me a lot of dates, friends, or anything other than strange looks, but it’s true enough. Cemeteries, for me, are enjoyable, exciting places, and I have always liked visiting them. I love the little, hidden ones out in the middle of nowhere, and I also love the big, grand ones with the decorative stones.

Cedar Hill is one of those in the second category. Cedar Hill lies along Mackeyville Road in Lamar Township, and if you want to find it, you won’t have much trouble. You can easily spot it while approaching from either direction; it’s one of those big ones that you can easily see coming.

A lot went into the creation of Cedar Hill back in 1870. Up until then, there wasn’t any kind of big, established cemetery in the area, but in spite of that, people still stubbornly insisted upon dying. They had to be either shipped to Highland in Lock Haven, which was a long trip, or buried in one of the small family cemeteries that dotted the area. The little ones weren’t considered ideal, however, as they weren’t legally protected against destruction by the growing local industries. So it was decided to create a chartered community cemetery.

It was decided that it would be placed on a local hill named Cedar Hill, and the cemetery was creatively named after the hill upon which it stood. A little over four acres was purchased from local farmer W.W. Brown. A managerial committee was selected to run the place, headed by local citizen Hugh Conley.

The first burial in the cemetery, technically, was Jennie Allison, a two-month-old baby who died on January 13, 1869. She was buried near the woods before the cemetery was technically even established, beating the creation of Cedar Hill Cemetery by over a year. The first official meeting of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Association was on February 6, 1870, and another one was planned for February 21, but Conley was sick at the time, and the meeting had to be cancelled.

Before they could schedule another meeting, Conley died, and I admit I’ve had the urge to do the same thing to avoid meetings myself. Conley passed away on February 24, 1870, and he was buried in the cemetery he’d helped create. This made him the first adult buried in the cemetery, or the first person buried there at all if you begin from the founding of the actual cemetery, not one year beforehand.

Artist Annie Snyder is buried in Cedar Hill—Her gravestone has her signature on it. The stone of Benjamin Perry is there, although Perry himself is not—He was unfound when Great Island Cemetery was moved in 1918, and his stone went missing for almost a hundred years, finally turning up discarded in Centre County. Great Island Cemetery sent several residents over to Cedar Hill when it was moved in 1918.

One of the more interesting stories of Cedar Hill Cemetery is William Wallace Chisholm and his children. The Chisholms were murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in April of 1877, and Mrs. Chisholm, the survivor, couldn’t stand to have them buried in the land where it had happened. So she chose Cedar Hill, where they were buried in 1879. Due to vandalism and threats from racists, they were removed, and some documents show them to have been secretly buried in Arlington.

(Side note, here: Do NOT contact me and insist that they are someplace in Huntingdon County because you saw an entry online claiming that. With no photos or supporting documentation, there’s no proof of that—Anyone can post anything they damn well please online. If you have this urge, come and see me, and I’ll show you my documents and explain what proof actually is.)

Cedar Hill Cemetery is still in operation. It’s a neat place—Historic and beautiful, worth visiting. An old book about the cemetery says it best: “No better place could have been selected.”