Lincoln Cemetery
Progress, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A landmark of central Pennsylvania's African American history. Established in 1827 by Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church. Among those buried here are T. Morris Chester, William Howard Day, Catherine McClintock, and at least 20 veterans of the Civil War.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Founded in 1827 by the Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church, this cemetery became a resting place for central Pennsylvania's Black community across generations. Among its graves are those of journalist and Civil War officer T. Morris Chester, educator and abolitionist William Howard Day, and more than twenty Civil War veterans. Each headstone marks a life that helped build free Black institutions in the decades around emancipation.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of African American leaders and soldiers whose work advanced freedom and citizenship, anchoring a community's history in sacred ground.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this burial ground was established in 1827, slavery was still legal across much of the United States, and even in the free states of the North, Black Americans lived hedged about by law and prejudice. In that world, the institutions a community could build for itself — a church, a school, a cemetery — were not small things. They were acts of self-determination.
Central Pennsylvania in these decades was a meaningful place for African American life. It lay north of slavery's border, within reach of the networks that helped people escape bondage, and it was home to free Black communities building churches and schools and fighting for their rights. The independent Black church movement, of which the congregation that founded this cemetery was a part, was one of the era's most powerful engines of dignity and organization.
Then came the Civil War, the hinge of the whole American story. For Black communities it was more than a distant conflict; it was a war that promised to destroy slavery, and one in which Black men fought to make that promise real. The generation buried here lived through that transformation.
People & events
The cemetery was established by the Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church, and that origin matters: it was created and sustained by a Black congregation for its own community, a sacred ground owned and tended by the people it served. Over the generations it became a resting place for central Pennsylvania's African American community and its leaders.
Among those buried here are figures whose work reached well beyond the region. T. Morris Chester was a journalist and a figure of the Civil War era; William Howard Day was an educator and abolitionist who gave his life to the causes of freedom and learning; and Catherine McClintock is named among those laid to rest in this ground. Their graves gather, in one place, lives devoted to the press, to the schoolhouse, and to the long fight for equality.
And then there are the soldiers. At least twenty veterans of the Civil War lie here — men from this community who served in the nation's defining struggle. Each of those graves represents a decision to take up the cause of the Union and, for Black soldiers of that war, to stake a claim to full citizenship with their own lives.
Its place in the American story
This cemetery is a compact monument to a truth the country has not always told well: that African Americans were not bystanders to the story of freedom but its authors and its soldiers. The journalists and educators buried here shaped public opinion and built institutions; the veterans helped win the war that ended slavery.
The service of Black soldiers in the Civil War carried an argument as much as a rifle. By fighting, they pressed the case that men who bled for the nation had earned its full protection and its full citizenship — a claim that echoed through the constitutional amendments of the era and through every struggle for civil rights that followed. A ground holding more than twenty such veterans is a local anchor for that national story.
Black cemeteries like this one are also among the most endangered pieces of American heritage, too often neglected or lost. Where one survives with its leaders and soldiers identified, it preserves names and lives that the wider record might otherwise have let slip away — which is exactly why such a place is treated as a landmark.
If you visit
Come quietly; this is consecrated ground and a working memorial, not a museum. The right posture here is respect — read the stones, take in the names, and move gently among the graves.
Look for the markers of the Civil War veterans in particular. Soldiers' graves are often distinguished by military headstones or small flags placed in their honor, and finding them one by one turns the marker's plain count of "at least twenty" into something you can feel. Seek out, too, any sign of the community leaders named here, and consider reading a little about their lives before you arrive so the names carry weight.
This is a meaningful stop on any journey through African American history or the Civil War in Pennsylvania. Let it reframe how you see the free Black North — not as a footnote, but as a place where people built churches and schools, buried their dead with honor, and sent their sons to fight for freedom. A few minutes of reflection here connects one patch of central Pennsylvania ground to the largest themes in the American story.
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
- · T. Morris Chester
- · William Howard Day
- · Catherine McClintock
Themes & tags
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