Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

There are somewhere around seventy cemeteries in Clinton County. The exact number is somewhat uncertain, depending on which source you’re looking at. But if you guessed there were seventy, you’d be pretty close, within, say, three or four cemeteries. Over the years, it’s been my unofficial goal to visit every one of them.

I’m maybe halfway through the list. Some are easier than others. One of the historic ones that I’ve visited several times is Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Cedar Hill is in Lamar Township, near Mackeyville. It was established in 1870, and is one of the bigger ones in the county. Also one of the more historic ones, not that any of them are exactly NOT historic.

According to the official record of Cedar Hill Cemetery, many of the locals wanted some sort of cemetery placed near them. There were already many tiny family cemeteries in the county, and Highland Cemetery had been established a few years prior, and Dunnstown had been there since before Clinton County existed. But there wasn’t much in the Lamar Township area. You wouldn’t think dead people would much mind the one-way commute, but it was apparently an issue. On August 3, 1869, citizens petitioned the court for land, and it was granted on January 18, 1870. February 9, 1870 was the first meeting of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Association.

Hugh Conley was the first president of the Cedar Hill Cemetery Association. He took the job seriously. He was so dedicated, in fact, that he died two weeks later, and was the first official burial in the cemetery. You really can’t beat that level of commitment.

Though Conley was the first person buried in the new cemetery, the land already had one resident. Jennie Gertrude Allison had died on January 13, 1869, and been buried on the land when it was still just a forest. So, though Jennie was already there, Conley was considered the first official burial in the cemetery.

There are some fascinating burials there. Annie Snyder was a hugely popular local artist, and she’s in Cedar Hill. Annie was born in Salona in 1852, and learned to paint by using leftover barn paint on her mother’s spare barn boards. She had a natural talent, and became one of the county’s most prominent artists. Often, she could be found in Lock Haven, raffling off her paintings at a quarter a ticket. When she died in 1927, she was buried in Cedar Hill—Her stone, like her paintings, has her signature on it.

Another high-profile story from Cedar Hill in the Chisholm family. William Wallace Chisholm was a judge in Mississippi, and he and most of his family were murdered in a cowardly, terroristic act of the KKK in 1877. His wife, who survived, couldn’t stand to have her loved ones buried in Kemper County, where the murder had occurred. She’d read of a new cemetery being established in a beautiful place to the north, and requested to have her family buried in Cedar Hill. On March 6, 1879, they were.

The Chisholm family, however, count as the few residents of Cedar Hill who didn’t stay there. Again, the KKK. A cool old sketch of Cedar Hill shows the Chisholm family monument—Not far from the Soldiers’ Monument, which still stands in the cemetery—-But there was vandalism to the Chisholm monument. Wishing to allow the family to rest in peace, they were moved to another cemetery, more or less anonymously. Old documents at the local library suggest that they were buried in Arlington.

I’m a fan of exploring cemeteries, and Cedar Hill is a neat one. I crossed it off my list years ago, but I still make the occasional visit, because it’s worth it.