It’s been more than a century since a body was buried at the Old Honesdale Cemetery, also known as the Old Methodist Cemetery.
But the environment continues to change around it. The cemetery exists in the middle of the block, surrounded by homes.
Jim Gershey bought one of those homes in 2017, seeing it as a peaceful place to spend the summer months.
“It's sort of a really cool thing to be next to a cemetery,” Gershey said, recalling how he felt buying the house.
And soon after moving in, he began to learn about the history of the area and his neighbors’ century-old stories.
A spooky discovery
Gershey said the home needed a lot of work when he moved in. When he began to work on his patio, he discovered flat stones.
“It turns out they were headstones face down as part of the patio,” he said.
Two years later, he found another one in his basement.
"I don't go back there very often because it's sort of creepy ... and I noticed this super flat stone," he said. "And I thought, 'Don't tell me it's another tombstone.'"
“So I moved them over here to this rock,” he said. “And I put all four of them just right here, which was on the cemetery property.”
The cemetery property is just about a foot from Gershey’s home.
Cemetery etiquette tips from the National Park Service say a person should not touch monuments or gravestones. But this was an unusual circumstance.
“I'm not superstitious,” Gershey said.
The cemetery’s history
Methodists settled in Honesdale in the early 1800s, as detailed in a book titled “Honesdale: The Early Years,” written by late historian Vernon Leslie.
The very first Methodist meetinghouse in the borough, now an apartment building, was constructed in 1834. It is also next to the cemetery, on the other side of Gershey’s house.
The Old Methodist Burying Ground, as it was first known, was donated to the borough of Honesdale by Jason Torrey, the founder of Honesdale.
Families used the plot to bury loved ones until another cemetery was built in 1859, shortly after the Honesdale Cemetery Company was established.
Newspaper articles from the mid-1800s show that the new site, the Glen Dyberry Cemetery, was very popular with plots selling quickly.
Gershey learned this history with help from the Wayne County Historical Society. He also discovered that some families transferred the bodies of their deceased loved ones from the old cemetery to the new one.
According to an 1864 article from the Wayne County Herald, “It is contemplated to discontinue all burials and to vacate the old grounds at the Methodist Church. Several removals have already been made.”
Gershey believes that is why the cemetery in his neighborhood seems sparse.
According to records obtained from the Wayne County Historical Society, about 200 bodies were buried here. The number of graves remaining in the site is unknown, and many of the words on the headstones have faded away.
Notable spirits
The headstones are tilted, eroded and not regularly visited. A few upright memorials stand tall, and two American flags wave in the wind.
The flags identify the graves of two Revolutionary War Veterans: Jabez Rockwell and Henry Holdren.
Rockwell, with ties to Connecticut, Milford and Wayne County, served as a private and fathered 14 children. He died in 1847.
Holdren died at 101. As detailed in an 1854 article, “The day was stormy, still the respect for a soldier, a Christian and centenarian, was exemplified in the fullest manner by the many in attendance at the funeral.”
Some 170 years later, the cemetery itself is unknown to some who live in the borough.
“I like cemeteries,” Gershey said, sharing all that he has learned from the peaceful plot. Gershey has now been asked to write on other topics for the Wayne County Historical Society.
He believes the tombstones he found on his property may have been remade for the other cemetery. But there is no way of knowing if those bodies are still buried there.
"I'm sort of being charitable there," Gershey said. "Just my theory."
