An Ongoing Keystone State Tragedy:

Driving on the Second-to-Last Historic Harrisburg Black Cemetery

       Harris Free Cemetery was established in 1857, as a free burial ground for the Black People of Harrisburg and Lower Paxton Township. The land was deeded to The Trustees of Harris Free Cemetery from the Henry Herr Estate, near what is now called “the Old Arsenal,” and the Insane Asylum (On the map below it is called the Pennsylvania Lunatic Hospital).

      There was no regular caretaker at Harris Free Cemetery, and most interments were conducted by the family members of the deceased, without any charge. Harris Free Cemetery was desecrated by the State’s Military in the 1870s, and although the State Legislature passed funds for recovery more than a decade later, the funds were never released. Harris Free Cemetery trustees would continue to try to raise money to move those buried, from under what is now Arsenal Blvd and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation at the intersection of North 17th street.

      After a widely-published scandal involving shallow graves being dug up by dogs in the late 1880s, the trustees of Harris Free Cemetery put the grounds up for sale. However, as late as the 1960s when the Commonwealth purchased one of the last remaining portions of the cemetery that had not previously been purchased, or taken through eminent domain, the land was still referred to as Harris Free Cemetery in the transfer of deed.

Notices of re-interment have not been found…