Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

I just got a message asking me about the Gaines Cemetery. I get this sort of thing every now and again; someone reaching out to ask about something historic. I figured I’d write an article about it, because I was stuck for a column idea this week, and here’s a topic to work on. Hell, at this point I have my records out anyway.

Gaines Cemetery is up in West Keating Township, the older of the two Keating Townships. When Clinton County was first founded in 1839, there was Keating Township, and just above it, Grove Township. A few years later, Cameron County was created out of part of Clinton, and this made two Grove Townships, right across the border from one another, in two different counties. The commissioners thought this might cause some confusion.

Imagine the street signs: “You are now leaving Grove Township. Welcome to Grove Township.”

So they renamed one to East Keating, making the lower one West Keating. This leaves two mysteries. The first is why they named them East and West, as they’re really North and South. The second is why they bothered with a second Keating Township at all—There’s like ten people between both townships, which is why I usually refuse to differentiate them at all, out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.

The Keating Townships were a big place for Underground Railroad fugitives to settle, being more remote than most of Pennsylvania. The Keating area, even today, is almost as remote as the moon. Two of the fugitives were George Schmoke and Jeremiah Gaines.

Gaines settled on a plot of land, and began farming it, and raised a family. Now, inevitably, people are going to eventually die, and you need a place to deal with that. So a portion of the property was turned in the Gaines Cemetery.

The Gaines Cemetery has a lot of markers, and also a lot of graves that are unknown. Entire plots of the cemetery are burials that have no marker and no record of the deceased. Jeremiah Gaines himself was buried there at some point in the 1830s, and he also has no marker. Underground Railroad fugitives not being all that big on record-keeping, it’s unclear whether there was ever a marker there or not.

Also buried without a marker is Robert Gaines, Jeremiah’s son, who was murdered by his brother William on July 13, 1863. Now, I’ve written about this in the past, and ridiculously, I’ve had people contact me to claim this was self-defense. But to clear the record—William shot Robert from outside the house, through a window, as Robert was eating dinner. By no stretch of the imagination is that self-defense, even if you have a really good lawyer.

Another interesting fact about the Gaines Cemetery is that most of William Lanager is buried there. Lanager lost his arm in a railroad accident, and the arm was buried in the Ateon-Aton Cemetery nearby. When he died in June of 1949, Lanager was buried in the Gaines Cemetery, a mile or so from his arm. To the best of my knowledge, this makes Lanager the only Clinton County resident buried in two cemeteries.

If you want to visit the Gaines Cemetery, my first impulse is to tell you to forget it. Many of the cemeteries up there are so remote as to be basically unfindable, unless you have four-wheel drive and a very deep sense of determination. Assuming you possess those things, the Gaines Cemetery is near Susie’s Lane, at the end of a path branching off of Township Road 302 in West Keating Township.

The cemetery is still in use to some extent, with at least one burial as recently as 2003. Though I cannot imagine your average funeral procession going over those outrageously unpaved Keating roads, I have an appreciation for the history of the place. I’m glad I fielded this particular question. Quick, someone ask me about another cemetery.