Pioneer Cemetery, Franklin, Pennsylvania

Over the rattle, roar, hum, of the lawnmowers and weedeaters, or was it beneath those sounds, I could have sworn I heard voices, maybe across the river, maybe down the street toward the courthouse, low, quiet, distant voices. As I moved across the fenced lot among the tombstones, occasional little American flags, local stones with engravings I had trouble reading now, the voices seemed to filter in, maybe being muffled by the surrounding trees, maybe across French Creek or somewhere along the Allegheny. Then, interspersed among the voices, I thought I heard the industrious strokes of a hammer, maybe John Broadfoot’s hammer building another house for a settler just arrived from farther east, Philadelphia, or even New York. That hammer kept working steadily but seemed to recede in the distance as another voice came through sounding a lot like I might have known John McLaurin’s voice would be, quietly insistent, encouraging us to keep working to “cherish their memories and keep their graves green”. The first time I stood in front of the gate to the Pioneer Cemetery and read the sign saying “First Burial in 1795” I knew I was in a special place, among historic people, people who would have remembered the stories of Fort Machault and how the French burned it to the ground in 1759 before retreating to Canada to leave America in the hands of the pioneers some of whom would be buried in that little plot on Otter Street. I walked inside and read the markers, slowly, one by one, moving from each to the next in awe of a group of people who had been brave and durable enough to come to the intersection of French Creek and the Allegheny to wrest the land from the French and nurture it until it became a quiet country town epitomizing the spirit of these people who had left England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales to come to a new, rough, rawboned land of mountains and rivers sitting in the way of the winds blowing off Lake Erie. These were people who included Lieutenant Francis Gordon, whose entire troop died in the loss of Fort Venango, and was burned at the stake after the fort was lost. This little town of little forts always outlasted the forts, the enemy forces who besieged them, the diseases which could not be cured, and the loneliness of living on what was in the late 18th century the western edge of civilization, the extreme limits of pioneer endurance until a few years later they sent their children farther west and often followed them taking that pioneer spirit to new places, new rivers, new forts, new adventures and dangers, moving, always moving, forever seeking more, more land, more freedom, more opportunities and always willing to engage in and win the fight necessary to seize the land and hold it against all comers. I have a major problem with the computer language on this blogspot website and I can't seem to get it corrected. My last few posts have had major errors in them which I can't seem to edit away. I apologize and I am working to correct it. When the problem has been addressed, I will re-edit the previous several posts. Keep coming back and thanks for reading my blog!