Valentine was the youngest son and remained on the property, marrying second, Mary "Polly" STINE, daughter of Mathias STINE (neighbor) and a sister to John STINE who married secondly Valentine's sister, Sarah, who had been married to William THUM. Valentine and Mary had one son, Benjamin H. WACHTEL; however, within one year between 1855 and 1856, Benjamin and both his parents died leaving his young widow, Catharine (STULL), and their two young daughters who moved to Stephenson Co, Illinois, where she remarried to George PENTICOFF Jr.
Sarah (WACHTEL) and John STINE's five children and their offspring were the last Wachtel-Stine descendants to live on this land. Sarah's husband, John STINE, who had started a school, which may have been the Independence School on the same named road, initiated the long overdue settlement of the estate with Otho WACHTEL, grandson of John Wachtel through his son John, giving testimony regarding all the now deceased children in 1865, before he moved westward to Illinois.
The 'homeplace' and cemetery were sold, first to a son-in-law, then in 1916, was sold out of the family until eventually being purchased by the County Commissioners of Washington County, Maryland.
An archeological study was done by R. Christopher Goodwin and Associates and later the remains of the 84 graves were reinterred at St. Paul's Cemetery near Clearspring, about 9 miles west of Hagerstown. A memorial service, dedicating the new marker and reburials was held on Sunday, September 11, 2005. The transfer of the Wachtel-Stine-Troup Family Cemetery to St Paul's Cemetery has now been completed.
DAR Cemetery Records, which were recorded in the 1930s -
Wachtel/Stine/Troup cemetery. They listed it as being on the "Edward T. Hayman Farm, near Row's Park, at Route 40 and Conococheague Creek, north side." The recorder was only able to identify four stones, as follows:
E. Wachtel - died Oct 13, 1825
Mary Wachtel, wife of Valentine Wachtel - died July 9, 1856
.....age 61 yr, 8 mo, 17 d
Benjamine H. Wachtel - died Oct 11, 1855 - age 26 yr, 7 m, 3 d
Jack Troup - died Jan 5, 1845 - age 57 yr, 2 mo, 9 d
37 Graves, plain stones
Lot of graves, no stones
More on the Cemetery from The Herald Mail Newspaper, Hagerstown, MD
April 20, 1999Plans to move cemetery OK'd
By SCOTT BUTKI / Staff Writer
The Washington County Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously adopted an agreement that includes plans to disinter bodies in a 19th-century cemetery within the boundaries of what will be the Lund Landfill. The county plans to exhume the bodies and rebury them on another site on landfill property. It is believed that 40 to 50 bodies were buried in the cemetery from 1825 to 1856. A memorial will be placed near the reburied bodies, Public Works Director Gary Rohrer said. The memorial and new graves probably will be placed in the west section of the landfill, he said. A landfill cell eventually will be constructed on the current site of the cemetery, which is about 60 by 72.5 feet. Had the county opted to work around the cemetery, which is in a major depression, the landfill's lifespan would have been reduced from 80 years to about 50 to 55 years, Rohrer said. The agreement approved Tuesday is between the county, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Maryland State Historic Preservation Office and the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation Finalization of the agreement was required to obtain Corps of Engineers permits for the landfill. The 425-acre Lund Landfill is scheduled to open in about 20 months, at about the same time the Resh Sanitary Landfill is expected to run out of room. The property is in a bend of the Conococheague Creek near Resh. The agreement requires the county to draft an archaeological data recovery plan by June 2001 and implement it by June 2003. The county used consultants in 1996 to do an archaeological investigation of the landfill property. The written archaeological report by Joseph Hopkins Associates Inc. of Baltimore said most of the identified gravestones were from three German-American families, Wachtel, Stine and Troup. The county will ask consultants to develop the recovery plan, which includes determining how many bodies are buried in the cemetery, Rohrer said. The county believes that under the existing contract, no additional money will have to be paid to the consultants for that work, he said. Many of the graves are in poor condition and it is difficult to tell exactly how many bodies and grave markers are in the cemetery, he said. The cemetery is eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
.....Other segments from the Herald Mail newspaper regarding this site -
Wendell L. Lund, a Washington D.C. attorney, sold the county the
land in 1990.
After referring to the landfill as Lund for several years county
staff reports have been referring to it as the Forty West Landfill
in recent months.
The cemetery is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, according to a 1996 archaeological report by Joseph Hopkins Associates, Inc. of Baltimore. The cemetery is in the southern section of the landfill. The archaeological investigation did not find the cemetery's name. The county refers to it as the Area 1 cemetery. The report's authors believe those buried in the plot were mostly German-Americans. Most of the identified gravestones were from three families, Wachtel, Stine and Troup. None of the families was historically significant, the report says. The cemetery is on property purchased by John Wachtel in 1797, the report said. The Stine family later held adjacent land. Rohrer said the county has been developing plans to deal with the small cemetery for four to five years and knew of its existence before obtaining the 425-acre landfill property in a bend of the Conococheague Creek near the Resh Landfill. It is unclear how many human bodies are buried in the cemetery, Rohrer said.
Rohrer has estimated it will cost Washington County about $12 million to close Resh and another $12 million to get Lund ready for operation. The Lund costs include $4.7 million to build a bridge and an access road connecting the site to U.S. 40, Rohrer said. The bid for that project is scheduled to be awarded at Tuesday's meeting of the Washington County Commissioners.
Rohrer proposed moving the bodies to new graves on Independence Road, at the western edge of the landfill. A memorial would be placed near the new graves, Rohrer said.
May 6, 1999
By SCOTT BUTKI
Staff Writer
Rose Hill Cemetery has offered to house for free the bodies which
Washington County plans to disinter at the land which will be used for
the Lund Landfill.
The cemetery would allow all of the bodies to be buried separately in
one part of the property, free of any expenses, said Bill Divelbliss,
manager of Rose Hill.
3I am just trying to help the county out so that they can get out of
this situation, Divelbliss said. The 135-year-old cemetery on South
Potomac Street is 110 acres and has 28 acres left to develop, he
said.
Moving the bodies to an existing cemetery would be a preferable option
to a prior county plan to put them elsewhere on landfill property but
not under any landfill cells, said Washington County Commissioner
William J. Wivell.
3That sounds a lot better than moving them to the west side of the
dump,2 said Emmert Stine of Falling Waters, W. Va.
It would also allow relatives of those buried in the cemetery to
easily visit the graves, Divelbliss said. Some relatives have said
they did not even know the cemetery existed until The Herald-Mail
began reporting on the county's plans to move it.
May 11, 1999
By SCOTT BUTKI
Staff Writer
A Hagerstown funeral home has volunteered to take care of the task of
moving to another cemetery the disinterred remains of the 40-50 bodies
buried inside a Washington County landfil property.
Gerald N. Minnich, funeral director of the Gerald N. Minnich Funeral
Home on North Potomac Street, said he is also offering to work with the
Maryland Health Department to get disinterment permits needed to move
the bodies from the small private cemetery.
We will do whatever work it takes to get the cemetery moved, he said.
In addition he would help a county consultant find information about the
funeral practices at the time the cemetery was used, he said. About
40-50 bodies were buried in the small private cemetery between 1825 and
1856, according to a 1996 county-commissioned report.
Public Works Director Gary Rohrer said the county may take Minnich up on
the offer.
Minnich's offer comes within a week of Rose Hill Cemetery offering its
location...
I thought it was very nice of him to do that, Minnich said.
website by Dorinda Davis Shepley
© Copyright 2006 MidMdRoots
Last revised:
March 27, 2007