File:Ancient and historic landmarks in the Lebanon Valley (1895) (14780389584).jpg

Identifier: ancienthistoricl00crol (find matches)
Title: Ancient and historic landmarks in the Lebanon Valley
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Croll, P. C. (Philip Columbus), 1852-1949
Subjects: Lebanon County (Pa.) -- History Berks County (Pa.) -- History
Publisher: Philadelphia : Lutheran Publication Society
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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chiseled on coldmarble with the significant In Memoriam ! Thetruth is, despite the somberness, a cemetery has certainindescribable charms for most of us. It is the place fordeep thought, for silent revery, for next to real com-munion with our departed friends. This graveyard has the old enclosure of a stone wallto keep out the vagrant, the irreverent, the vandal andthe busy world that surges by, with neither time nor in-clination to check its rushing gait for a thing so utterlyforeign and chilling to its arduous zest as that of aburial place. It is a pity that this wall has too oftenshut out also the presence, the sight and the tender careof the surviving friends of these departed ones ; forthere is not apparent here the tender care, which theworth of the departed, the name of this church, and theconspicuity of this street corner deserve. Could not SALEM CHURCH AND GRAVEYARD. 273 Steps be taken to beautify this spot like Mt. Lebanon,and a fund be raised to keep it in repair? We should
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ANOTHER VIEW OF SAEEM EUTHERAN CHURCH, EEBAXON, PA. be glad to give a transcript of many old tombstone in-scriptions found here, but we have space for but a few. 274 LANDMARKS IX THE LEBANON VALLEY. Some of the oldest have so faded that they are no longerleg^ible. It is believed that such an one marks thegrave of )\Ir. George Steitz ; for upon the most reliabletradition of his descendants, despite any former supposi-tion to the contrary, it is generally believed that thisfounder of our town, who died in 1769, lies buried here.His great-great-grand-daughter, )\Irs. Allen D. Hofifer,told the author that she remembers having visited inher childhood this old graveyard in company with hergrandmother, wdio used to point out an unmarked gravenear the western wall as the spot where grandfatherSteitz was buried. But even this is only tradition, how-ever reliable. Can it be that this old German founder ofLebanon was, like the great leader and lawgiver of Israel,buried by the angels of God out o

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