Historic Hempfield cemetery seeks volunteers, donors to help care for grounds

Mar. 4—William McBride stepped on something hard as he walked through Hempfield's Union Cemetery last week.

Using his hands to dig at the turf, he uncovered a long-hidden marker for a Civil War veteran: Henry C. McKenzie, who served with Company K of the 4th West Virginia Infantry Regiment and died years later, on Oct. 3, 1898.

It's typical of the dedication McBride and other volunteers demonstrate as they work to tame the grass and maintain order in the roughly 130-year-old burial site.

"Right now, it's probably the best it's looked in a long time," McBride, who is a board member and Hempfield resident, said of the cemetery. "When we started out, the grass was probably 8 to 10 inches high."

The retiree estimates he puts in 30 hours of work each week at the cemetery, but he and fellow board members are hoping to recruit some younger volunteers and obtain donations of equipment or funds to help keep their effort going.

"Everybody on the board is at least 60 years of age," said Mark Kettering of Hempfield, the president. "We're looking at the next generation, who's going to take over five years down the road?"

The cemetery's current 13-member board formed in 2016 and took on the responsibility of caring for the 12 acres of the 23-acre property that isn't wooded. There was little money remaining in the cemetery's perpetual care account that had been maintained at a local bank after a previous board dissolved, Kettering said.

"We're at the place now that, if we want to keep the cemetery up and running, we need help," he said.

This past fall, the cemetery lost the services of a grass maintenance provider who retired and the support of a donor who was covering the related costs of about $700 per cutting.

Since then, board members and other volunteers have been using their own tools and equipment to tackle chores, including clearing away fallen tree limbs. A volunteer brought in a front-end loader to lift back into place a heavy ball-shaped stone ornament that vandals had knocked from the top of a monument.

The families of those buried in the cemetery are supposed to care for the headstones and monuments placed at the graves of their loved ones. But Kettering noted many of those laid to rest generations ago may no longer have relatives in the area.

Some headstones have shifted or toppled over time, and one is now partially embedded in the trunk of a spruce tree that grew around it.

Union Cemetery has well over 1,000 burials on record. Those include veterans of conflicts dating back to the Mexican-American War and at least 30 of Kettering's relatives.

Local firefighters who have found a resting place there include longtime former Greensburg fire Chief Ed Hutchinson.

There is plenty of room for more.

"Our only income is selling burial lots, but we're a small rural cemetery," Kettering said. "We do have interments, but they're people who already bought lots."

A riding mower is at the top of the list of equipment the cemetery board would like to obtain, rather than relying on volunteers providing their own. It also is considering purchasing and repurposing a cargo container as a shelter for storing such equipment.

That's where donations will come in handy.

The board recently obtained official tax-exempt status that will allow those who make monetary contributions to claim them on their tax returns.

When the Union Cemetery was incorporated in 1890, "there were already people buried here," Kettering said.

The property was purchased from the Blank farm for $5,600, and there are a number of members of that family interred at the site.

"There's a lot of history here," Kettering said.

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at jhimler@triblive.com or via Twitter .