Methacton Mennonite Meetinghouse Cemetery Transcriptions

Mill Road and Quarry Hall Road
Worcester Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA

Cemetery in good condition, active, accessible

Methacton Mennonite Meetinghouse Cemetery likely began as the Styer family cemetery and expanded to a neighborhood cemetery when additional land was obtained from Henry Rittenhouse.  The oldest surviving stone in the cemetery appears to be that of George Beyer, age 5, dating to 1744, when this was a neighborhood cemetery.  The cemetery was the burial site for the community and contains Schwenkfelders, Dunkards, Mennonites, and other individuals from the area.  In the Schwenkfelder area, a monument was erected in 1934 by the Schwenkfelder church with twelve names and their émigré numbers [the marker says ten but two more were later identified and added], which can be sourced through the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, 105 Seminary St., Pennsburg, PA or by referencing the Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelder Families by Dr. Samuel K. Brecht.

The famed colonial Dunkard preacher and printer Elder Christopher Sower, Jr.’s burial site is designated by a granite marker erected in 1938.  The original stone is kept at the Brethren Meeetinghouse in Germantown, PA.  The cemetery is surrounded by a stone wall that used to keep the sheep in and the grass short.  Money to build the wall was left to the church in the will of Mary Knittle, who lived nearby and is interred here.  It has been repaired on several occasions, at one time using some of the headstones, which can be seen in the Quarry Hall Road section of the wall.  Cars have damaged it twice, one car damaging or destroying many stones when it failed to navigate the curve in Mill Road.

The rows are numbered beginning closest the church. Position number indicates only the number of the stone in that row.  Due to irregularities, Rows and Positions are not precise and only to help in locating standing headstones.

Notations carried over from the Reinford transcription are:
S                      Schwenkfelder-Genealogical Record of the Schwenkfelder families
R                      Rosenberger-Swartley Family History
W                     Wismer Family History
C                      Cassel Family History
B                      The Boorse Family
RH                   History of the Rittenhouse Family
K                      Kulp-Kolb Family History
BMCHS           “Deaths in the Skippack Region”  Bulletin of the Montgomery County Historical Society, Norristown, Pa., October 1951, Edition
Mensch Diary    Mennonite Heritage Center, Harleysville, PA

The present church was modeled after the typical Dutch Mennonite meeting places in Holland and the Krefeld area of Northern Germany. The pulpit currently (2014) in use was taken from all three meetinghouses on this site. Sunday School rooms were built from the wood of the horse/carriage sheds when they were dismantled.

Tombstone Transcriptions:
1966-67 – Wilmer L Reinford transcription
2008 – Leslie Lowell-Griffin, Katey Griffin, Susan Kull