Harlem Township Cemetery Projects keep moving forward

By VICKIE TIECHE

Harlem Town­ship Her­itage, Inc.

The year 2012 has been a very suc­cess­ful one for ceme­tery ren­o­va­tion projects in Harlem Town­ship. In late June entrance marker stones were added at all six town­ship ceme­ter­ies as a joint effort of the town­ship and Harlem Town­ship Her­itage, Inc. A ded­i­ca­tion cer­e­mony for these stones was held in Harlem Ceme­tery on Octo­ber 7.

More recently, RAR Mon­u­ments (Rick Day) has com­pleted repair work on five of the stones in Harlem Ceme­tery most need­ing repair — the large Budd stone that had fallen from its ped­i­ment, a large Clos­son stone also fallen off the ped­i­ment, the stone of Har­riet Smith that was slid­ing down the hill­side, the stone of Mary A. Emily Adams cut by Harlem Methodist Epis­co­pal Church founder, Rev­erend Daniel Ben­net that had fallen over and was dis­placed, and the bro­ken stone of Colonel William Budd. Fund­ing for the Harlem Ceme­tery repairs was pro­vided by Harlem Town­ship. Hope­fully more repairs will be made in 2013 in this his­toric, almost 200-year-old cemetery.

Pos­si­bly the most notable achieve­ment for 2012 was the repair and new place­ment of a very large, white mar­ble, mil­i­tary stone in Cen­ter Vil­lage Ceme­tery that had been bro­ken, knocked over and dis­placed by the large tree. The stone had no names on it, but was almost def­i­nitely the stone of one of the two miss­ing Civil War buri­als in the ceme­tery. When the repaired stone was put back up in an unused por­tion of the ceme­tery, stones for the two miss­ing vet­er­ans and the wife of one of the two were placed on the ped­i­ment beside the large mar­ble mon­u­ment. GAR flaghold­ers with flags were placed behind the two veteran’s stones.

Fund­ing for this project was pro­vided by Harlem Town­ship Her­itage, Inc. partly from a dona­tion from Patti Stafford of Penn­syl­va­nia, the third great-grand-daughter of Peter Carr – 45th OVI, one of the miss­ing vet­er­ans, and his wife, Pelia Ann Hartrum Carr. The other miss­ing vet­eran who now is remem­bered in Cen­ter Vil­lage Ceme­tery is Wash­ing­ton Williams, from the 64th OVI. This repair work was also done by RAR Monuments.

Harlem Town­ship Her­itage, Inc. hopes to carry this momen­tum for repair and preser­va­tion of the township’s ceme­ter­ies into 2013 and beyond.

If you’re inter­ested in becom­ing involved in these projects, please con­tact Vicki Tieche at < mvtieche@att.net > or 740–965-4535.

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.