Bigler Graves
Hempfield Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Jacob and Susan Bigler, parents of two governors, are buried here. Their son William was Governor of Pennsylvania, 1852-55; and their son John, Governor of California, 1852-56.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the sod of this Mercer County ground lie Jacob and Susan Bigler, a Pennsylvania farming couple whose two sons rose to lead states on opposite coasts. Their son William became governor of Pennsylvania in 1852, while in that very same span his brother John presided over California, still fresh from the Gold Rush and newly admitted to the Union. It is a rare distinction in American history: one family, two brothers, two governor's chairs held at the same time.
Why it matters
The Bigler brothers embody the restless mobility of mid-19th-century America, a single frontier family sending sons east and west to shape the young republic on both edges of the continent.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The mid-nineteenth century was an era of restless motion in America. The Early Republic had given way to a sprawling, fast-growing nation, and families that had put down roots in states like Pennsylvania often watched their children scatter across a continent that seemed to be expanding every year.
Mercer County, in western Pennsylvania, was solid farming country — the kind of place where an ordinary couple might live, work the land, and be buried among neighbors. Jacob and Susan Bigler were such a couple, parents raising sons in a young republic still figuring out what it would become.
What sets this quiet burial ground apart is where those sons ended up. In an age when Americans were pouring west, this one family's story stretched clear across the country — and reached the highest office of two very different states.
People & events
Jacob and Susan Bigler lie buried here, and the marker remembers them not for their own fame but for their children. Their son William became Governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1852 to 1855. Their son John became Governor of California, serving from 1852 to 1856.
Read those dates together and the remarkable fact leaps out: for a stretch in the early 1850s, two brothers from the same Pennsylvania family held the governor's chair at the same time — one in a long-settled eastern state, the other in a western state only just admitted to the Union and still reeling from the Gold Rush.
Behind that headline is a parents' story that the marker honors by naming them first. Jacob and Susan raised the men who rose so far, and it is fitting that their graves, not their sons' capitols, are what this memorial marks. The distinction of the family flows from this ordinary ground.
Its place in the American story
The Bigler brothers make vivid something central to their era: the sheer mobility of mid-nineteenth-century America. One family could send sons to opposite edges of the continent and see both rise to lead — the nation was that open, and that unsettled.
California and Pennsylvania in the early 1850s were almost different worlds. One was among the founding states, its institutions old and established; the other was brand new, transformed overnight by gold and rushing to build a government from scratch. That brothers from a single household presided over both at once captures the reach of American opportunity in those years.
And because the marker names Susan Bigler alongside Jacob, it quietly honors the family and the women within it who anchored these sweeping stories. The grand careers of governors trace back, always, to a home and the people who made it.
If you visit
This is a memorial in Hempfield Township, Mercer County — a burial place rather than a grand monument, so come in a reflective frame of mind. The power of the spot is in the contrast between its quietness and the size of the story it holds.
Stand for a moment with the simple fact in mind: buried here are the parents of two sitting governors, on opposite coasts, at the same time. It is the kind of detail that makes a small country cemetery suddenly feel connected to the whole span of the continent.
On a road trip through western Pennsylvania, this makes a memorable, human stop between the region's better-known sites. Let it remind you that American history is not only made in capitols and boomtowns, but is rooted in ordinary family ground like this.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jacob Bigler
- · Susan Bigler
- · William Bigler
- · John Bigler
Themes & tags
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