Radar scans could assist in preservation of abandoned midstate church

(Harrisburg) — Students from Dickinson College are planning to use radar to survey a forgotten cemetery in Cumberland County Wednesday. 

The Mount Tabor AME Church in Mount Holly Springs was recently rediscovered, after a revitalization project known as Greater Carlisle Heart and Soul started collecting stories of growing up in the area.

The church was founded by a former slave in 1870, and served an African American community for about 100 years.

Lindsay Varner, community outreach director with the Cumberland County Historical Society, is working to preserve the site.

She says while only part of the cemetery is clearly visible, students will scan a wider area to find the outer boundaries.

She says they hope to fence off the area and create markers for it.

“So hopefully, through this radar, we’ll be able to get a better idea of where possible graves are, and then we can be thinking a little bit more about how we interpret the cemetery and think about the African American community in that area,” Varner said. 

She adds any information gathered by the scan will be helpful.

“We have no paper documents from the church at all. There’s no plot map for the cemetery, there’s no congregation list,” Varner said. “The only thing that we really have going on is family memory and people who attended the church up until 1970 when it closed.”

Varner says any information they can gather about the church and cemetery will help make the case for a state historic marker and to get it on the National Register of Historic Places.

Update: Due to weather, the scan is now scheduled to take place next Wednesday, March 28th.