AKA: Owl Hill Cemetery
Number of Burials (approximate): 200
Dates of Activity: 1800 - present
Documentation/Publication:
CCGS, The Cemeteries of Gallagher, Pine Creek, and Wayne Townships (2005)
Directions/GPS:
Traveling on PA Route 150, turn right onto McElhattan Drive and cross over the Susquehanna River. At 0.5 miles, turn right onto Old Bridge Road (TR 572). Turn right onto McKinney Road (TR 420) at 0.2 mile. Pass the Lenni Lenape monument on your left at 0.1 mile. Travel a total of 1.9 miles on this road and turn right. You will follow a dirt road up a slope which crosses two sets of railroad tracks. Park in the clearing area and walk across the tracks, through the barred path on the other side and up the hill a few hundred feet. The path leads to Quiggle Cemetery. Note that in the warmer months there are many mosquitos in this cemetery, as it is along the river.
N41 09.924 W77 20.371
Landowner / Caretaker:
Quiggle Cemetery
McElhattan, PA 17748
Condition/Needs:
Very Good / straightening or raising of some stones
History:
Philip and Michael Quiggle, and their families, came from Lancaster County to what is now Clinton County at the end of the 18th century. They settled on farms near the Susquehanna River, not far from the site of the old Fort Horn. A need arose for a place of interment for their families and their neighbors, and the Quiggle Cemetery developed from this need. The earliest known burials date to 1800, and some may be older. Over the years, the cemetery have fallen into states of disrepair and renovation. Currently, the site is maintained by members of the Simcox family, who use it as their own private burying-ground. This cemetery is also called Owl Hill Cemetery.
A visit to the cemetery by "Jake Haiden" (aka Jacob Huff) in 1911 was recorded in his Philosophy:
"DURING the seven years I lived in my present home, I have sat on the front porch and looked across the Susquehanna river to a bluff just beyond the P. & E. Railroad. White tombstones, looming up above the weeds, white teeth of Death, indicated that human bodies had been laid there to rest, while the struggle with others continued for a little while longer. Mrs. Haiden often spoke of going over to visit the spot. To her an old graveyard appeals with stronger force than the most beautiful garden of flowers. Three years ago, when we visited Washington, the wise old faces of the Senators and Representatives of the people did not appeal to her. Neither did the political stench of the Capitol. Arlington cemetery and the Egyptian mummies in the National Museum took her fancy. They were flowers handed down to us from a former generation, as they say in the Declaration of Independence.
"Well, Mrs. Haiden's curiosity to visit the old Quiggle cemetery overcame my laziness, and one fine Sunday we persuaded Professor Stevenson to accompany us, and we crossed the river at the ferry and walked through the fields to the place of interest. The cemetery is quite an old burial ground for this neighborhood. We could not determine how old, because the first graves made there were marked only with mountain sand-stones, and only a few of them bore an inscription.
"One of the graves was marked with a granite monument and surrounded with an iron fence, and inside the enclosure was an iron bench, just as though some loved one left behind would often come there and sit in the solitude and commune with the dead man under the sod. It was a beautiful and tender suggestion, and if the dead could really send back a message to the waiting ones, how much of death's mystery could be cleared away. But aching hearts and the longings of yearning souls have failed to bring back even a whispered message from the land beyond the shadow line. The dead cannot talk to us any more than the living can talk to the dead. The wires are all down between the living and the dead--all down and out of use, and when we sit at the graves of our loved ones, all we can do is to recall the past; if time is a circle, then heaven lies in the past, as well as in the future, and the needle of our mental compass always points into the great beyond, no difference where we look.
"On one mountain stone we found the figures 1803, and the name was not Quiggle but Andrew K. Rinder [sic, Krinder]. He had been buried one hundred and seven years-before the war of 1812 was fought between our country and Great Britain. The roar of the cannons could not disturb his rest. The big trains on the "Pennsy" go thundering by only two hundred feet away, but Rinder does not hear them. He never saw a steam locomotive nor a railroad track. These modern inventions have crowded in upon his resting place, but he is done with the world-he does not care. He lived his little life and lies in his little grave on this lonely little hill. Perhaps we will be as thoroughly forgotten in a century from now as Andrew K. Rinder . It has been over a hundred years since that name was set up in printed letters perhaps it will. never appear again. Did some mysterious force lead me there to resurrect that long-forgotten name? Who can say? Life is a plan and a purpose; we move as the wheels in a clock, urged by a power to which we are attached by unseen hands."