|
Pleasant Grove Cemetery
(Formerly known as Kline Cemetery) 184 Pleasant Grove Road Style: Gothic Revival Chapel, 1888 |
The Gothic Revival cemetery chapel was built in 1888. (Photo by Patricia Longoria)
|
By Patricia Longoria
Village of Cayuga Heights Deputy Historian
Village of Cayuga Heights Deputy Historian
The Burial Ground
|
The oldest gravestone at Pleasant Grove Cemetery is dated November 3, 1805.[1] A chipped fieldstone grave marker with simple carved lettering and without ornamentation commemorates the life of Joanna Brown, who died at 81 years old. Her life spans the tumultuous years when the American colonies forged their own identities and severed ties with Great Britain. Joanna was born ca. 1724. She experienced the Revolutionary War years in New Jersey, where her husband Walter Brown died in 1773. Joanna’s son Walter served as a captain in the Continental army. In the early 1800s, when Joanna was in her seventies, she settled in the Military Tract settlement of Milton (now known as Lansing) with one of her sons. She spent her last years there.[2]
|
Joanna Brown’s (ca. 1724-1805) gravestone in the “Old Burial Ground” at Pleasant Grove Cemetery
|
In the original “burial ground,” the earliest family graves—Brown, Kline, Manning, Cradit, LaBar, Hanshaw, Bush, Apgar—reveal the history of the settlement of Tompkins County. Like Joanna Brown’s gravestone, these markers are material reminders of the families who settled in the region after the Revolutionary War as part of the military grant system. (A few Revolutionary War veterans, as shown on the Tompkins County NYGenWeb site, are buried in Pleasant Grove Cemetery, though not all of the gravestones have been found.)
|
The Kline Cemetery, as it was previously known, was non-sectarian. That is, it was not connected to a particular church or religious group. Nor was the cemetery only for people who had resided in Hanshaw’s Corners, the small farming community in Northeast Ithaca where the cemetery was located. Families from Lansing, Forest Home, Varna, and Etna also buried their loved ones in the Kline Cemetery, revealing that kinship, business, and other social ties extended across several communities. (For a partial list of people buried at Pleasant Grove Cemetery, visit the"Find a Grave" site and the Tompkins County NYGenWeb site.)
|
The double-arched slate gravestone of Methodist Episcopal minister Anning Owen (1751-1814) and Mary Hartsough Owen (1758-1814). Anning Owen was the first Methodist pastor in Lansing. (Photo by Patricia Longoria)
|
Charles Alfred Hasbrouck (1863-1910) lived in Free Hollow (now known as Forest Home) and had two obelisks installed to mark the graves of his grandparents, parents, and his wife. (Photo by Patricia Longoria)
|
FOOTNOTES
[1] Local lore has it that some of the Brown family graves may have been moved from the Brown family cemetery in Lansing to the Pleasant Grove Cemetery. (George Apgar, Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association Board Member, Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association Annual Meeting, September 27, 2015.) Dora Pope Warden, Tompkins County Gravestone Inscriptions, New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1921, January 1922, and January 1923, http://tcpl.org/local-history/documents/TC_GRAVESTONES/ithaca.pdf.
[2] Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31546834.
[1] Local lore has it that some of the Brown family graves may have been moved from the Brown family cemetery in Lansing to the Pleasant Grove Cemetery. (George Apgar, Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association Board Member, Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association Annual Meeting, September 27, 2015.) Dora Pope Warden, Tompkins County Gravestone Inscriptions, New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April 1921, January 1922, and January 1923, http://tcpl.org/local-history/documents/TC_GRAVESTONES/ithaca.pdf.
[2] Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31546834.
