✣ St. John’s UCC Richlandtown ✣
The cemetery sits on a wedge-shaped plot of land, with older headstones crowding up to an iron fence facing North Main Street. Despite living close to this graveyard for many years, this was the first time I’d visited. Chartered as St. John’s Reformed Church in 1806, the original building was dedicated two years later, and has gone through multiple iterations including a rebuild in 1859 and renovations in 1932 and 1937. I was unable to locate information on when the first internment occurred at the cemetery, but it seems that burials occurred close to the dedication in 1808, and has been in continuous use since then. Contemporary graves sprawl farther back from the building with rolling fields as a backdrop. There is a mix of English- and German-language headstones in the oldest section, which may be related to the fact that the Church used to house two congregations, one Reformed and one Lutheran, until 1932 (the Lutheran Church is now across the street). ➺ Church History
➺ Find A Grave
➺ Local Cemeteries
An interesting feature of this cemetery are a number of ornate headstones where the lettering and designs are all carved in relief. Although it’s common to find partial segments of text carved in this manner on later Victorian era gravestones (including examples in this cemetery), ones entirely carved in that style are much less so. I was not able to confidently read the dates on any of them, but one stone is accompanied by a marker indicating the deceased was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. I suspect they all date from that approximate time period, early in the church’s history. Reminiscent of detailed fraktur manuscripts, they must have been spectacular in decades past. Now they’re a bit more intriguing as weathering has left a lot for the imagination to infer.
“Blumme” (flower) and “Schtanne” (star) motifs also appear prominently in the older section of this graveyard. On one headstone, the central rosette is flanked by either two winged soul effigies or angels. Although rather worn, the headstone in the 7th image seems to show a stylized vase holding five flowers.
These are a few post-1850 graves which I found appealing. Interestingly, some of these headstones are out of place in the chronological layout of the cemetery. For instance, the Alivia Diehl and Rev. William Kaemmerer memorials are located very close to the building and fence, an area otherwise occupied by headstones from earlier decades. ✣ Church & Main St. Richlandtown, PA 18955 • Richlandtown Borough, Bucks County ✣
Comments
Post a Comment