SITE DIRECTORY
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Lincoln Cemetery---Harrisburg
LINCOLN CEMETERY — HARRISBURG
FOUNDED: 1877
ADDITONAL NAMES: Wesleyan AME Church Cemetery, Harris Free Cemetery, African Burial Grounds
AFFILIATION(S):
Friends of Lebanon Cemetery
HISTORY:
Lincoln Cemetery is Harrisburg’s oldest surviving Black Cemetery. The ground was consecrated, outside of the city limits, in November of 1877 on a plot of land that lies on the border of what is now the Town of Penbrook and Susquehanna Township in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
Although the first burial at Lincoln Cemetery did not occur until 1877, most of the Black People who died in Harrisburg, since the 1700s are also buried here. They had to be disinterred from the earlier Black Cemeteries, located within city limits, when it became illegal to bury Black People within them.
Lincoln Cemetery is the final resting place of over 90 Black Civil War Veterans (and counting), and hundreds of veterans of later wars. Almost all of Harrisburg's early black leaders are buried in Lincoln Cemetery. Including former slaves, leaders in the Underground Railroad, politicians, doctors, lawyers, the first Black Superintendent of schools, journalists, musicians, college professors, countless reverends, entrepreneurs, firefighters, schoolteachers, policemen, civil rights activists, and founding members of our Nation’s most prominent Black Fraternal Orders.
Lincoln Cemetery is clearly a significant cultural heritage resource for the region. But Harrisburg's unique geographical position, also made it a transportation hub, a crossroads and waypoint for Americans migrating North, South, and West during the 1800s. So, Lincoln Cemetery is also Nationally significant---A source of unexplored and untapped stories and data about the Black Family, social networks and community in the 18th-20th centuries, it is an untapped well in an individual's quest to break the 1870 brick wall and has the ability to galvanize all people to a deeper understanding of the importance and significant role Black People had in the building of our nation.
BCN Contact Information:
SOAL: Saving Our Ancestors' Legacy
soal@lincolncemetery.org