SITE DIRECTORY
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Mount Holly Colored Cemetery
MOUNT HOLLY COLORED CEMETERY
FOUNDED: Oldest identified burial 1888
ADDITONAL NAMES: None
AFFILIATION(S): None
HISTORY:
The Mount Holly Colored Cemetery is on Cedar Street near Mountain Street in Mount Holly Springs, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. During and after the Civil War, people coming north from southern states stopped in Mount Holly Springs and stayed to take the jobs in the town’s paper mills, establishing the Mountain Street community. The cemetery was the burial ground for all the black residents of Mount Holly Springs since they were not permitted to be interred in the town’s municipal cemetery.
Over time the community changed. By 1970 Mount Tabor AME, a small frame church (ca 1870) across the road, was abandoned and crumbling and the cemetery neglected and overgrown. The Mount Tabor Preservation Project was formed in 2019 to repair and preserve the site. GPR scans indicate the grounds included approximately 65 burials, although only 18 headstones exist. There are seven USCT Civil War veterans who were formerly enslaved.
BCN Contact Information:
Mount Tabor Preservation Project
mttaborpreservation@gmail.com