Fayette County Genealogy Project

Chestnut Hill Cemetery - Connellsville

Compiled by E. M. Whetsel from a transcription by Duane Layman and Kathy Gardei. Additional information from other sources.

The following article, compliments of the Tribune-Review, gives some history of this cemetery.

The St. Emory’s lot is just one section of the larger Chestnut Hill Cemetery. The greater part of Chestnut Hill is located off Wills Road, overlooking St. Emory's. Immaculate Conception maintains the St. Joseph's section there; The Chestnut Hill Cemetery Association maintains another large section.

Bill Foley, the current president of the association, credits Richard and Barbara Husband with starting the group in 1987.

The corporation that had run the cemetery went out of business decades ago, and while some families gave good care to individual plots, other sections were overgrown and their tombstones overturned. "It was in awful shape," Foley said.

After more than a decade of hard work, Foley said association members have managed to turn "a wilderness" into a cemetery in "pretty good shape." The same cannot be said for the Old Connell section adjacent to St. Emory's off Baldwin Avenue. The section was carved out in 1900 to move the remains from an existing graveyard to make way for the construction of the Carnegie Library.

The then Connellsville School Board was involved with the creation of the Carnegie Library and the relocation of the cemetery to Chestnut Hill, according to Toth and others. Toth cites a page in the "Centennial History of Connellsville" that notes the sale of the Chestnut Hill section to the school board.

Foley appeared before the Greater Connellsville Area School Board in 1995 to request that the district assume responsibility for the land. But Connellsville Area Superintendent Gerald Browell said there are no records that the school district owns the land, and they cannot accept responsibility if a link isn't established. The .6 acre lot is abandoned and no one, it seems, is responsible for its maintenance.
(Courtesy of the Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA)

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