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.
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Related events
- · Underground Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Dennis Farm
Brooklyn Township, PA · est. 2015
In 1793, Prince Perkins, a free African American veteran of the Revolutionary War, came from Connecticut to settle this land in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, and his descendants have held it for more than two centuries. His granddaughter Angeline Perkins Dennis and her husband Henry expanded the farm, sustaining a rare, lasting Black landholding in an integrated rural community. The property offers a window into free African American settlement and the strong antislavery currents that ran through this corner of Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Jasper Wright (1840-1885)
Springville Township, PA · est. 2001
Born in 1840 to parents who had escaped slavery, Jonathan Jasper Wright grew up in Springville and went on to become the first Black lawyer admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. He stood with Frederick Douglass in the fight for the vote and legal equality, and in 1870, during Reconstruction, he was elevated to the South Carolina Supreme Court—the first African American to sit on a state's highest court. His rise from a runaway slaves' son to the bench marked a breathtaking, if fragile, moment of possibility.
David Wilmot
Bethany, PA · est. 1947
In this house in Bethany, David Wilmot was born on January 20, 1814. A Pennsylvania congressman, he gave his name to the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a proposal to bar slavery from any territory won in the Mexican War. Though it never became law, the Proviso set off one of the fiercest debates in American politics, hardening the sectional divide over slavery's westward spread in the years before the Civil War.
William Camp Gildersleeve (1795-1871)
Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2004
A prosperous Wilkes-Barre merchant, William Camp Gildersleeve turned his home and business into a refuge for freedom seekers, making him a central figure in the Underground Railroad of the Wyoming Valley. In 1853 he testified in a widely reported federal case arising from the shooting of a fugitive named William Thomas by deputy marshals—testimony that drew national notice, especially in African American newspapers. His public stand came amid the fierce national conflict over the Fugitive Slave Act.