Purdytown Cemetery

The inundation of a hydroelectric reservoir typically entails at least some relocation of residents. Farms, barns, roads and other infrastructure in the path of the rising water must be moved to higher ground. When Lake Wallenpaupack filled in during the summer of 1924, Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. was faced with the ticklish task of moving an entire cemetery to higher ground.

At first, PP&L staff thought there were approximately 20 bodies buried in the Purdytown cemetery on what was then known as the Maud Andrews property in Paupack Township of Wayne County. But by the time the cemetery was moved to a new site along the Wilsonville-Lakeville Road in Paupack Township, contractors had identified 54 bodies in the 100-year-old burial ground.
In a June 10, 1924, Wayne County court order, Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. was given authorization to move the Purdy Cemetery about one-half mile, out of the path of the waters backed up by the dam being built near Wilsonville. The family cemetery had been abandoned for at least 50 years, and PP&L had advertised in the local Hawley Times its intentions of moving the cemetery that summer. Since "no relatives or friends of the dead having asked for permission to remove the remains at their own expenses," the court ordered that PP&L could remove the bodies at its own expense. PP&L contracted with Hawley undertaker George Teeter to move the bodies from the Purdy Cemetery to the new burial ground. Teeter was to be paid a flat rate of $450 for moving what was originally estimated to be 20 bodies. Work on relocating the Purdy Cemetery began the third week of August.
At first, rumors in the surrounding cornmunities suggested that workmen had found no bodies. "It has been reported that workmen have been unable to find any trace 'of coffins or bodies in a large number of graves," a news item in the Sunbury Daily Item of Aug. 20, 1924, reported. "Is the removal of markers and tombstones equivalent to removal of bodies from their graves?"
In reality, the opposite was the case. Teeter and his crew found human remains in nearly every grave. Tracing burial records in the county courthouse, Teeter found that the earliest burials in the Purdy Cemetery dated to 1810. Elder William Purdy, the pastor of the Baptist Church of Palmyra and his wife Rachel, the people for whom the cemetery was named, were buried within four years of each other between 1824 and 1828. All told, there were considerably more than 20 burials in the cemetery. "After the old site was thoroughly cleared of trees and underbrush in preparing to open the graves, it was found that there were more graves there than the original count seemed to show when Mr. Teeter and I made this count together," PP&Ls W.C. Anderson wrote John Wise in Allentown on August 7. "There are 27 or 28 well marked graves having one or two stone markers each, instead of 20 as we previously thought were there, and there are plain indications of still more graves which are not so distinctly marked with the names of individuals buried in them."
All told, there were 56 graves in the Purdy Cemetery. In a commentary on the child mortality rate in the 19th century, at least 30 of the bodies in the cemetery were infants or children. PP&L agreed to pay Teeter $20 per body for moving and reinterring the bodies in the cemetery, and the job was essentially completed by the end of August 1924. It was one of the more unique relocation efforts of the hydroelectric era in Pennsylvania.