In addition to “God’s acre” by the churches, there are private cemeteries and burial grounds scattered throughout the area. Many of them were started early in the 18th century by prominent plantation (the early name for farm) owners. These families tended to keep their dead on the homestead.
The family burial plots were often situated on an elevation overlooking the farm or on a nice site near a stream. The largest family burial ground in the Swamp Creek Valley is in Upper Frederick. This unique spot, known as the Leidy Cemetery, is formed where the corners of four large colonial era plantations met. A stone marks the exact spot that the four properties touch. At this junction an equal square portion of land was set aside by the four farms’ owners: Reverend John Philip Leydich, Christian Stetler, George Michael Kuntz and George Moore, wherein they buried their dead. In 1783, a stone wall was built enclosing the graveyard, the corners of which point to the cardinal points of the compass. The corner of the Stetler plot points to the north, Moore to the east, Kuntz to the south and Leydich (now Leidy) to the west. There are about 200 known burials there, and the site is well tended.
Volunteers from the Schwenk family and others have recently pitched in to clear brush from the Zieber (now Zuber)-Schwenk Graveyard located along the Scioto Creek at Faust Road in Upper Frederick. It is one of the most earliest private cemeteries wherein are buried some of the first arrivals of the families of Bauman, Faust, Frack, Grubb, Hunsberger, Miller, Reimer, Schwenk, Schmidt (Smith), Walt, Yost and Zieber (Zuber). The plot may have been used as a burial ground as early as 1725. It is 100 by 130 feet and it too may hold as many as 200 burials. It was deeded from the old Zieber farm by Johannes Zieber as “a burial ground for his family and kin” and never sold. However, the last individual who was known to have maintained it was Edgar Grubb, now deceased, who had relatives buried there.
Descendents had best be vigilant lest any of these old cemeteries suffer the same fate as the Borneman family cemetery in Upper Hanover. In the 1980s, it was simply bulldozed away by a contractor for Montgomery County, in order to relocate a roadway for the Knight Road bridge.
But, the most historically significant Hutberg (burial ground) is on the Colonial Road plantation of Henry Antes in Upper Frederick near the border with New Hanover. Antes acquired the property from John Henry Hagerman in 1735, and Antes’s son Jacob is the first recorded burial there in 1739. Whether it was an established burial ground before that date is unknown.
The cemetery is known as the Shalkop Burial Ground, as that family owned the site in the early 19th century and erected a stone wall around it with a gate over which a casting bears the date 1809.
Henry Antes, undoubtedly the most prominent leader in this Germanic region, is buried here. Before acid rain erased his tombstone it read: “Here lies Henry Antes, an upright brave worker for the right and a true servant of the world and God’s people. He passed away in Frederiche Town [Frederick] July 20th, 1755 aged 54 years.” Buried here too is his father, Philip Frederick Antes, the family patriarch who arrived in Swamp in 1721.
According to an article by Vivian F. Taylor published in the 1986 Bulletin of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, there were seven inscribed tombstones in this cemetery, four Antes and three Schelkop. We know who they were, as the gravestones were copied and recorded in Family Cemetery Typescripts by an unknown hand in the early part of the century. Today, however, only three gravestones are there; the fate of the others is unknown.
The cemetery holds at least three neighbors’ graves; tradition holds that 17 unknown soldiers of the Revolutionary War were buried there after the Battle of Germantown.
There are 10 more documented burials that occurred between 1745 and 1750 when the Antes House was used as a Moravian Boys’ Boarding School. These burials are documented in detail with names, dates, parents, baptismal records and more, in the Moravian Church Archives in Bethlehem.
In her article, Ms. Taylor notes: “Several of the burials are quite unique in the history of Montgomery County. Two are Indian children and one is a black child from St. Thomas Island in the West Indies who died and was buried while attending the school. I believe these are the only documented burials of Indians in the county where the names and ages of specific Indians are known. The black child could very well be the first documented burial of a black person in the county.”
As for the black child, the Moravian church sent missionaries from Germany to the island of St. Thomas in the West Indies in 1732. The record shows: “August 6, 1746, MANUEL, a Negro child of six years from St. Thomas died, blessed in the lamb, in BR. HENRICH ANTES’ house and was brought to our ‘Hutberg’ by BR. SCHAAF towards evening.”
Schaaf was a teacher at the school, who buried his own son Adolf there in 1747.
The school closed in 1750 and the property passed from the Antes family to Catharine Jolly in 1778. After that the chain of title goes: Catharine Jolly to Thomas Mayberry in 1783; Thomas Mayberry to Adam Wartman in 1788; Adam Wartman to Valentine Schelkop in 1790; Shelkop to Jenkin Rhoads in 1837; Rhoads family to Isaac Schelkop family in 1866; and Mrs. Frank Rugg, the last remaining member of the Schelkop family, to Goschenhoppen Historians, Inc. in 1968.
No records are known to exist of the Jolly, Wartman or Rhoads families being buried there.
The Antes/Shalkop Cemetery is now under the ownership and care of the Goschenhoopen Historians who maintain it.
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.
