The Pioneer Cemetery In Franklin, Pennsylvania

When I was an employee of a private, for profit program for juvenile offenders called Vision Quest, I spent a little over a year living and working in the little court house Pennsylvania town of Franklin, which is the county seat of Venango County, located about an hour north of Pittsburgh and about halfway between that city and Erie, Pennsylvania, on the shores of Lake Erie. During most of that time, I frequently supervised groups of juvenile clients who were allowed to do community service work in the surrounding town and county. One of my favorite parts of that job was to take a crew of three or four boys into Franklin to mow the grass at the Pioneer Cemetery. According to the Daughters of The American Revolution:

The Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1795 when the Borough of Franklin was established. It became known as 'The Old Graveyard Where Many Franklin Pioneers Were Laid to Rest'. For many years, the Franklin Pioneer Cemetery was forgotten. The monuments were broken, brush grew throughout and no interest was taken in this historical site. Then in 1955, the Venango Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, took interest with the help of the Franklin City Council and many area citizens to make the site once again a beautiful Cemetery. The Pioneer Cemetery now is an asset to the City of Franklin and the County of Venango. Thousands of visitors from all parts of the country have taken time to visit and walk through this quiet spot to read and admire the beauty of the Cemetery. The first permanent settler of Franklin, George Power, is buried in Pioneer Cemetery. He was sent by George Washington to help build Fort Franklin. George Power returned in 1797 to make his home in Franklin. In addition there are three Revolutionary War veterans, nine War of 1812 veterans, and two Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery. Currently the Cemetery is maintained and funded primarily by the Venango County Chapter, DAR.

The Pioneer Cemetery is one of the most historic places I have ever been, and I am proud to say that I have particapted in the effort, for that one year, to keep it clean, neat, protected, and perpetual. I loved to walk around the cemetery and read the grave markers of all the historic and patriotic early Americans who are buried there. It was a beatutiful experience. The text below is a piece of writing I produced a few years ago about that experience but never submitted to the publication source I had in mind at the times. 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.

This is the link which will lead you to the Pioneer Cemetery on Find A Grave. The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War soldier William Duffield (743-1827).

The photo below is of the grave marker of Revolutionary War Captain James Gordon Heron.