Results tagged “Springettsbury Township” from Universal York

Subscribers for a cemetery fence in Spring Garden Township

Blake Stough recently shared the above image of a document he had purchased on eBay some time ago. It lists subscribers for a fence to be built around "the old burial ground on the premises of Vincent Keesey, Esq." in Spring Garden Township. The document is transcribed below.

There is no date, but, looking at the 19 listed names, I am guessing around 1850 to 1875. The land is probably now in Springettsbury Township, which was formed from Spring Garden Township in 1891. I don't think it refers to the Erb Cemetery, which I discussed earlier--none of the names match up.

The 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman York County atlas shows V. K. Keesey in Spring Garden Township at the southwest corner of East Market Street and what is now Haines Road. The Springettsbury Township history, published to commemorate the township's 100th anniversary, confirms that East York was originally "the Keesey Tract." Some of the names of leading families in that history also match up with the subscribers.

The cemetery was likely somewhere in on near the area known as Old East York, but I don't know where or what happened to it. We have heard tales that there was a cemetery near York Suburban Middle School. That's in the general area. Does anybody know for sure where the cemetery was and what happened to the people buried there and their gravestones?

The document reads:

The 280 acres on which Camp Security was located is highlighted in yellow.

I am glad to see that there is going to be an archaeological dig this summer at the Schultz house, which was the original pre-Revolutionary house on the land that David Brubaker owned during the Revolutionary War. Camp Security was located on part of David Brubaker's 280 acres from 1781 to 1783. It is located in present-day Springettsbury Township, but it would have been part of Hellam Township at that time.

Historic York, Inc. presently owns the house and the four+ acres on which it stands. True, four+ acres is a fraction of the property in Brubaker's time, but it is a start, or restart, into exploring the only undeveloped site of an American Revolutionary War prison camp. (There were previously two limited digs done on another part of the original acreage.)