Discovering Chestnut Hill: Historic Yeakel Cemetery Conservation Success Story

Posted 11/16/16

Leigh Hassler injects grouting into an ancient gravestone at the Yeakel Cemetery in Wyndmoor. As a college student Hassler was an intern at the Chestnut Hill Historical Society and is now a materials …

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Discovering Chestnut Hill: Historic Yeakel Cemetery Conservation Success Story

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Leigh Hassler injects grouting into an ancient gravestone at the Yeakel Cemetery in Wyndmoor. As a college student Hassler was an intern at the Chestnut Hill Historical Society and is now a materials conservator. (Photo by Liz Jarvis) Leigh Hassler injects grouting into an ancient gravestone at the Yeakel Cemetery in Wyndmoor. As a college student Hassler was an intern at the Chestnut Hill Historical Society and is now a materials conservator. (Photo by Liz Jarvis)

by Liz Jarvis

The 300 year-old Yeakel Cemetery in Wyndmoor is being carefully restored, thanks to many friends, volunteers and experts. With funds from the Schwenkfelder Church, Bowman Properties, and many local people who care about history, the professionals from Materials Conservation, Inc. have been hard at work preserving the historic cemetery during October.

The Yeakel Cemetery is the final resting place for some of Chestnut Hill and Springfield Township’s earliest inhabitants. The cemetery is located in a secluded wooded area behind the rehabilitation center at 8833 Stenton Ave. in Wyndmoor. The Yeakel Cemetery Preservation Committee was formed in 2012, bringing together the Schwenkfelder Church in central Montgomery County, who owns the plot, descendants of the people buried in the cemetery, and the Chestnut Hill and Springfield Township historical societies.

The Yeakel Cemetery was once owned by the Mack family of Germantown and was used as a place of burial prior to 1753. Many buried there were Schwenkfelders, a Germanic Protestant sect, who came to Pennsylvania for religious freedom, like the Quakers, Mennonites and other groups did. The right to a proper burial was denied to many of these settlers back in the Old World, so this modest burial place represented an important new freedom for them.

With funds raised, a survey was done at the cemetery in 2014, with each gravestone measured, recorded and photographed. Then the 86 stones were grouped in priority order for treatment with over one third of the markers being treated this fall. Gravestones that had fallen or were leaning have been righted and meticulously cleaned, sometimes with dental tools. It is important to remove dirt from the extremely fragile surfaces, but without eroding the relief so that the stones can be read for generations to come. A special cleaning solution kills the biological growth with the help of the sun. This is followed by a consolidating solution, which helps strengthen the surface of the stone and slow the deterioration process.

Broken stones are miraculously put back together like well-fitting puzzle pieces, with injections of grout and mechanical pinning. A gantry was sometimes needed to lift the heavy stones into place. Volunteers from the Chestnut Hill Historical Society were trained by the conservators to help with some of the cleaning.

In the past four years the Yeakel Cemetery Preservation Committee has improved the access road to the site, taken down four potentially hazardous trees, had the site regraded to curtail erosion through the cemetery, and cleared brush and debris. Periodic tours open to the public have been offered.

Besides the conservation work still to be done, the beautiful stone wall which surrounds the cemetery needs major rebuilding. Due to previously unchecked erosion, the wall has fallen down in two places. The Committee can’t continue these improvements without you. Please support the Yeakel Cemetery by making a donation today. To donate, please visit: www.yeakelcemetery.com or mail a check to:

The Schwenkfelder

Church Yeakel Cemetery Fund

H. Drake Williams

2111 Valley Forge Road

Lansdale, PA 19446

Liz Jarvis is a curator and Archivist who has worked for the Chestnut Hill Historical Society since 1994. She is the author of “Chestnut Hill Revisited” (2004) and “Mount Airy” (2008) and co-author of “Chestnut Hill” (2002), all published by Arcadia. She can be reached at ljarvis@chhist.org.

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