Cedar Grove Cemetery | Patience, Persistence, Perspiration

The Village of Dott is about halfway between Needmore and Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania. The country store closed a few years ago. Now the Cedar Grove Christian Church is the only public building to keep company with the homes in Dott. The church is surrounded on two sides by the Cedar Grove Cemetery. Also known as the Cedar Grove Christian Cemetery, its view looks out on the gently rolling foothills of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians. Many of my maternal ancestors are buried there.

Documenting the more than 600 headstones, monuments, and markers in this cemetery took several days from the end of September through mid-October 2020. My mom and I worked together with one of us taking photos and the other looking ahead, determining relationships between monuments, giving directions, and keeping track of what we had already documented. Cemeteries appear to be organized in neat, straight rows. However, walking among the stones and accounting for each one tells a very different tale. One important thing that I learned in working with my mom to document this larger cemetery by ourselves is that working with a partner can be of great benefit.

When we started documenting this cemetery, the weather was still very warm. We took photos on two Saturdays and also some evenings in October when the temperature cooled with autumn's onset. We encountered several challenges in this cemetery. In the older section, many stones had moss, lichens, algae, and mildew on them. We used soft brushes and cloths to remove as much as possible to make the engravings and etchings legible. Even so, some of them remain illegible. We found a few broken stones and dug overgrown grass away from surface monuments that had sunk into the ground.

In the words of Napoleon Hill, "[p]atience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success." Our effort and persistence paid off. Together, we photographed and uploaded 850 images to BillionGraves. Click here to view the BillionGraves webpage for Cedar Grove Cemetery.

Documentation Dates: September 20 - October 15, 2020

Images Contributed: 850