Baer, John - 1913

PLACE OF SACRED MEMORIES
The Rev. D. H. Baker Visits Old Burying Ground Near East Berlin.

Leaving my Hanover home one pleasant morning for the cemetery at Mummert’s church, near East
Berlin, I stood at dear mother’s grave, a fitting place for sacred devotion.  I looked at the
turf that will soon be removed to receive the frail body.

Looking over the City of the Dead, many incidents came to my mind of fifty and more years ago,
some were pleasant and some not so pleasant.  I thought how unfortunate that there was no
record kept of the time when the first grave was opened here, and who occupied it.  The
venerable Adam Brown told the writer a number of years before he died, that this cemetery is
over 150 years old, so it must be over 200 years ago that the first was buried here.  I took
paper and pencil to ascertain how many Baker names I could find.  I didn’t go far ‘till I
noticed many Browns; also kept note of them, finding 51 Baker names and 35 Brown names.  I
think the Mummert name would come next.  I also found 10 solders’ graves, one of them I am told
served in the war of 1812.  It is a pity that Government markers are not place on their graves. 
They can be had for the asking.  Commissioners furnish them.

The first church at this place was built 64 years ago.  I was about 11 years old, my father
hauled stones from the Hartman quarry, now owned by E. L. Kauffman.  The present structure took
the place of the first in 1882.  My brother Daniel, Jesse Masemore and J. E. Bowser were the
building committee.  Nathaniel Baker was the carpenter and John Trimmer the mason, all gone
with the exception of J. E. Bowser.  Prior to these churches the services were held in the
members’ homes, in the summer in the barns and in the winter in houses.  The funeral sermons
were preached in a small school house built of unhewn logs and situated on the banks of a small
stream known as Hartman’s run, on land of John Baer now owned by Cornelius Renold.  No public
road to this building, timber not encased.  I remember my parents took me along to this place
to a funeral, the sermon was preached by an aged silver-lock preacher, very tall and all
German, by name of Wm. Trimmer.  This was about 70 years ago.

My brother George told me that he and sister Kate, Mrs. D. N. Bucner, went to school at this
place, prior to the passage of the free school act, is it was then called.  Brother George told
me than an old man by the name of Mundorff, who had a faint knowledge of the three “R’s,” was
the teacher, or rather master.  He ruled with rigor.  This was some 80 years ago.  Thank God
for the procession in education, especially in discipline.

(Rev.) D. H. Baker

~  The Hanover Herald, 20-Dec-1913