Hickory Grove Cemetery
Waverly Township, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One of the oldest known cemeteries associated with African Americans in Northeastern PA. Established in 1807 in Waverly, then known as Abington Center, the cemetery is the burial ground for many fugitives from slavery who came to the area via the Underground Railroad in the mid-19th century. By the end of the 19th century there were 75 former slaves in Waverly. This cemetery is evidence of the former African American community here.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Established in 1807 in what was then called Abington Center, Hickory Grove Cemetery is among the oldest known burial grounds tied to African Americans in northeastern Pennsylvania. Many of those laid to rest here were fugitives from slavery who reached Waverly by the Underground Railroad, part of a community that numbered some 75 former slaves by century's end. The cemetery remains the enduring trace of that vanished community.
Why it matters
This burial ground is physical evidence of a self-made free Black community forged by the Underground Railroad, preserving a story that might otherwise have been forgotten.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the first graves were dug at Hickory Grove in 1807, this corner of northeastern Pennsylvania was still frontier country, a scatter of farms and mills known then as Abington Center. Pennsylvania had already set slavery on a slow path to extinction through its gradual abolition law of the 1780s, and by the early 1800s the state was becoming a place where free Black families could put down roots — carefully, and never without risk.
The decades that followed sharpened the stakes. As the nation lurched toward the Civil War, the country north of the Mason-Dixon line filled with people fleeing bondage in the South, and with the neighbors, churches, and quiet networks that helped them. A rural Pennsylvania township like Waverly was exactly the kind of place where a person could arrive with nothing and begin again.
That backdrop is what makes this ground remarkable. A cemetery this old, tied this directly to an African American community, is a rare survival in the region — proof that the story of freedom in the North was not just written in cities but in small townships you could drive past without noticing.
People & events
The people who matter here mostly did not leave famous names, and that is the point. They were men and women who escaped slavery and traveled north along the Underground Railroad — the loose, secret chain of safe houses and sympathetic guides that moved freedom-seekers toward the free states and Canada in the middle decades of the 1800s.
Many of them stopped in Waverly and stayed. They built a community, raised families, worked, worshipped, and grew old in a place they had reached at great personal danger. By the close of the 19th century, the marker tells us, some 75 former slaves lived here — a whole neighborhood of people who had once been considered property and who died as free residents of their town.
Hickory Grove is where that community laid its own to rest. The graves are the record of lives the wider history books rarely captured: not a single dramatic event, but a long, patient act of survival and belonging carried out by people who chose this valley as home.
Its place in the American story
The Underground Railroad looms large in the American imagination, but it can feel abstract — a story of routes and codes and narrow escapes. A burial ground like this makes it concrete. These were not travelers passing through history; they were founders of a lasting community, and the ground holds the proof.
Sites tied to free Black life before and during the Civil War are precious because so much of that life went undocumented and so many of its physical traces were lost. A cemetery is unusually durable evidence. It testifies that self-emancipated people did not simply reach the North and vanish into it — they established roots, institutions, and a shared final resting place that outlasted the community itself.
In that sense Hickory Grove speaks for countless small Northern communities whose Black histories have faded from memory. It is a reminder that the American story of freedom was built, grave by grave, by ordinary people whose courage rarely made the headlines.
If you visit
Come expecting quiet. This is a small, old cemetery in a rural township, not a grand monument, and its power lies in that modesty. Give yourself time to simply stand among the stones and consider that some of the people buried here began their lives in bondage and ended them free, in a place they chose.
Walk slowly and read what the weathered markers still allow you to read. Older cemeteries like this often show their age in leaning and worn stones; treat everything gently and stay on obvious paths. Let the marker's own words about the vanished African American community frame what you're seeing — you are, in effect, visiting the last standing trace of a neighborhood.
It fits naturally into a thoughtful loop through the Lackawanna County countryside. Pair it with the region's other historical stops, but let this one be the reflective heart of the day rather than a quick photo. It rewards patience more than it rewards a schedule.
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 events
- · Underground Railroad
Themes & tags
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