Overgrown Herr Chapel Cemetery full of hidden history

There’s no telling how many Union soldiers and prominent local figures are buried beneath the dense overgrowth at Herr Chapel Cemetery.

Many monuments are sunken, caked in moss or eroded beyond legibility. Others appear to simply be half-buried rocks, and may or may not indicate a grave.

Without the worn, wooden sign dangling from a tree along Sample Road in Hampton Township, most passersby might miss the cemetery altogether.

John Haltigan, 78, of McCandless, wants to see the land restored with the help of some “young backs and strong legs.” He learned about the cemetery a couple years ago from a friend who caddied at nearby Wildwood Country Club as a kid, piquing Haltigan’s interest as an Air Force veteran and amateur military historian.

He was especially attracted to the story of Pvt. George Pannel, who enlisted in the Union Army in 1864, and never made it home. His body, according to Haltigan, probably rests in one of the mass burial trenches on the grounds of the Salisbury, N.C., National Cemetery. But there’s a monument to him at Herr Chapel Cemetery.

Two months after Pannel’s enlistment, Confederate soldiers took him prisoner during a skirmish near Petersburg, Va., that was known as the “Beefsteak raid” due to Confederate cavalry officer Wade Hampton and his 3,000 horsemen capturing 2,500 head of Union cattle.

Haltigan’s research shows that Pannel and other Union prisoners initially were taken to the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, Va. The Pannel memorial in the Herr Chapel Cemetery states that he died at Libby Prison on Sept. 19, 1864. Records with the National Archives, however, show he was transferred to Danville Prison on Sept. 24, 1864 and later to a prison in Salisbury, where he died on Oct. 26, 1864. The cause of his death is unknown.

Pannel’s cenotaph memorial — which also marks the grave of his father, Isaac — lists George as being 18 when he died. It is one of the best maintained monuments at Herr Chapel Cemetery.

Find A Grave, a platform where people can post burial information to create a kind of virtual cemetery, lists 33 people interred at Herr Chapel. It’s likely that more graves remain undiscovered, according Rich Boyer, 80, of Shaler, a photographer who’s documented the site.

The cemetery was once connected to United Brethren Church, a long-defunct Mennonite meeting house that’s disappeared from sight, Haltigan said. It’s been decades since the land received frequent maintenance and has “gotten a lot worse” over time, according to Joe Romanelli, 58, of McCandless.

The McCandless-Hampton border runs right between Romanelli’s home, built in 1954 by his grandfather, and the cemetery.

“Back when I was young, we would run through there, and it was not nearly as overgrown as it is,” Romanelli said.

Of the graves that Haltigan and others have managed to identify, five bear the last name “Allison.” Haltigan speculates there’s a connection to Allison Park.

Herr Chapel is also the resting place of Rev. Benjamin Herr, who established the cemetery, according to Find A Grave.

“Genealogy people would go crazy in this place,” Haltigan said.

Herr’s father is the namesake for Herr’s Island, a roughly mile-long strip of land in the Allegheny River near Lawrenceville and now known as Washington’s Landing.

According to Hampton Municipal Manager Christopher Lochner the township has no plans to become the cemetery’s caretaker. It’ll likely be up to private individuals and organizations to tackle this challenge, though Haltigan isn’t sure who.

At the moment, the only sign of regular visitors are American flags placed by the graves of Civil War veterans.

“And now it’s like they never lived at all,” Haltigan said. “It isn’t going to be an overnight project.”