Who's buried in this forgotten Lebanon County graveyard? A historical detective story

Shrouded by a small cluster of trees and bushes at the corner of an east entrance to the Lebanon Valley Expo Center on Rocherty Road, two parallel lines of limestone plates stick up from the ground.

In the mix of all that foliage, piled stones take the shape of a wall, and on the northeast corner are limestone slabs of what might have been an entrance, making for what could be a family cemetery possibly hundreds of years old.

Photographer Timothy McGowan remembers when Rochery Road was first built, taking the road by bus on his way to Cedar Crest High School, briefly realizing at the time that he could see a cemetery off the side of the road.

He forgot all about the cemetery for decades, until one day a couple of years ago, while preparing for the Lebanon County Fair, he was reminded in conversation that there was a cemetery on the expo center's property.

"I said, yeah, you're right," McGowan recalled. "Somebody ought to do something about it. Research it, 'cause nobody knew anything. So I got permission from them and started investigating it a little bit. Found out how much of a puzzle it is and why no one else has gotten to the point where they found out who's here."

McGowan and his son have spent the last year cleaning up the cemetery. He described what was an unnavigable scene covered in vines, bushes and tree branches. They've since removed garbage and overgrowth, as well as locating and documenting things that he thought might be important to his investigation.

"You hear so much in the news about people wanting to destroy history, cover it up. And what I wanted to do is at least try to preserve the history," he said. "Make it known, honor the people that are here no matter what race, religion or ethnic background they're from. Just make it known who's here, what they had to go through to get here."

Recently, he contracted GPRS to conduct ground penetrating radar on the site.

The ground penetrating radar found disturbances beneath the gravestones, as well as additional disturbances next to the marked graves, positioned roughly in the same line, that could indicate additional graves which no longer have markers. It's possible that eight or more people are buried at the site.

Isiah Runkle of GPRS explained that while the scanners aren't able to show what is in the ground, it's able to show that there is something there and how deep it is.

While not the most common use case, Runkle said that ground penetrating radar is used often in searching cemeteries or looking for lost items.

The scans also found that there weren't any abnormalities below the smaller slabs, indicating that they're instead likely foot stones to match the larger headstones, noting both the top and bottom of the grave. A tree has grown such that it's begun to absorb two of the footstones into its trunk.

Ultimately, McGowan would like to finish cleaning the site and restore the limestone rock walls around the cemetery, as well as putting up some sort of plaque that honors those buried there, then turn over the records to the historical society. It's important to him that the graves and their stones remain undisturbed.

The big question, who's buried there?

McGowan has gone to great lengths in his search to determine who exactly is buried on the property. There are no etchings on the headstones and, as of yet, no useful relics have been recovered in the topsoil that could be used to carbon date when they were buried. He's also found little from the wall that would indicate when they were erected, other than a fence post that was put up much later, likely by a recent owner attempting to retain the wall, due to it having nylon cord attached to it.

What makes it harder is that it's likely a family plot, meaning that it wouldn't be in any kind of church records.

"Historical societies didn't know anything about it. There's a couple grave experts, the foot stone person and the non foot stone person, they're experts in old cemeteries, they didn't know about it. Through more involvement I think we're kind of getting some clues."

The only map he's been able to find that even indicates there's a cemetery on the property is from 1969, when the road was surveyed, with nothing more than a hand sketch noting that it existed.

He has made contact with a descendant of the previous owner of the property who was able to confirm that it was in fact on the property when they were growing up.

Unfortunately, the former owner who might have known more died around five years ago.

Early on in the search, McGowan enlisted the help of William Stillman, a local psychic, to see if he could get a read on the names of who might have been buried there, as well as who could have owned it. A recording of that reading can be found on McGowan's YouTube page.

"I brought him here, we just stood out here in the field and we started the video. He didn't know why he was here, he just kind of did a couple of talks and he goes, 'Ah, there's a cemetery here.' He didn't know, he's from Hummelstown."

McGowan said that Stillman was able to pull some names and letters that names started with, but did not know what era those names came from.

McGowan possibly has a lead on who might have been the original owner of the property, a Swedish immigrant named Hans Zimmerman who would have been issued a land grant from William Penn sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s. But because of they way the land has been changed over time, and how survey markers are no longer around, McGowan is unsure whether it was Zimmerman's property or not.

Instead of working from who might have been the original owner forward, he's working his way back to piece together the puzzle.

He's currently back to the 1850s on ownership of the property and hopes to make it all the way back to the 1600s.

But the owners between those two periods have been hard to track down, as the land had at different periods been a part of Chester County, Lancaster County and Dauphin County, according to McGowan.

The Lebanon County Historical Society wasn't able to pull up much, and he said Lebanon Valley College did not seem interested in helping when he reached out.

Once he knows who owned the property back to 1812, he'll be able to consult with the Lancaster County Historical Society, which might be able to dig up earlier owners.

"The fact that it's unmarked and the tombstones are unmarked, it's baffling," he said. "It's kind of exciting. Hopefully, we'll find something somewhere in here, maybe near the wall it'll say something, I don't know. I don't know if they kept any records but somewhere somebody knows something."

Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on X @djlarlham.

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: The mystery of Lebanon Pa.'s hidden cemetery