Lincoln Cemetery Restoration Year 1
SOAL’s Lincoln Cemetery Restoration Year 1 Video Montage
Since finding human remains on the ground in June 2021 at Harrisburg’s oldest historically Black burial ground, Lincoln Cemetery, a small but growing cadre of volunteers have been dedicated to Saving Our Ancestors Legacy using best-practice least-harm historic preservation methods. We have recovered headstones that haven’t been seen for over 100 years and added over 3,000 memorials to findagrave (by June 2022). Watch SOAL’s Lincoln Cemetery Restoration Year #1 Progress video— It was a remarkable achievement, and we got so much more done before the end of November 2022—follow our work on the blog and social media for winter updates, and join us the 3rd Friday in March when we kick-off our 2023 Restoration season! SOAL is restoring Harrisburg’s Community and American History Bone By Bone.
SOAL Year One: Making Progress BoneByBone
(June 2021-July 2022)
The Lincoln Cemetery Restoration Progress Year #1 video montage focuses on a small part of the work done by SOAL volunteers in restoring Lincoln Cemetery. This video showcases the huge changes that the cemetery has undergone and the power of our small, but determined group of volunteers, donors, and contributors.
We initially targeted our work in Block C because it had the most visible damage by trees and overgrowth. It was the area where we could see the stones that were being harmed by the lack of care and oversight of the grounds. In Block C we recovered the gravestone of Thomas Morris Chester, Ja,ne Marie Chester, and many other notable Lincoln Cemetery Ancestors!
It also has some of the oldest burials in the cemetery, including many ancestors who were disinterred from the older Black Cemeteries in Harrisburg, including several ancestors who were born in the 1700s!
These early central PA graveyards were The African Burying Ground, The Wesleyan Church Cemetery, The Bethel Church Cemetery, and the Harris Free Cemetery, which all existed within Harrisburg’s city limits. We know that many of these ancestors were re-interred in Lincoln Cemetery when the grounds were purchased in Penbrook, outside the city limits in November 1877.
Watch Bone By Bone on SOAL’s YouTube Channel
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