Shippensburg - Locust Grove Cemetery

Just up the road from Chambersburg is Shippensburg, PA, a small college town.  Shippensburg is the home of Locust Grove Cemetery, which is located on the 100 block of North Queen Street.  Locust Grove Cemetery was also the site of the first African-American church in Shippensburg, the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Locust Grove Cemetery is a small but significant site in the African-American history of central Pennsylvania.  The cemetery originated as a burial place for enslaved and freed blacks and continued to be the only public cemetery that allowed Africans to be laid to rest there until the twentieth century.  It currently is the final resting place of at least seventy-six African-Americans, including forty-seven veterans, forty-two from segregated units, who fought in almost every American war.  Twenty-three of those forty-seven veterans fought in the Civil War and include troops from the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, as part of the United States Colored Troops.  This cemetery has been a part of the African-American history of Shippensburg from circa 1781 to the present-day and remains the site for the annual African American Memorial Day program, held yearly at this site since the 1920s.  The Locust Grove Cemetery tells the story of the African American struggle from enslavement to freedom and the brave men who fought for the cause. 

Other Information
* An informative website with more detailed information on the history of the cemetery and the people who are buried there can be found here.

* A list of those buried at this cemetery can be found here.

* The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission placed a marker in 2007 noting the site of Shippensburg's first African-American church and cemetery.  The text reads: Burial ground for slaves and free blacks since the early 19th century and site of Shippensburg's first African American church, established 1830s.  Edward Shippen Burd granted the land to Shippensburg’s African American community in 1842.  It was the only public cemetery open to African Americans in the area until the late 20th century. Graves of veterans from the Civil War to the Vietnam conflict include those of twenty-six Civil War soldiers. 

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