by Judith A. Meier.
This article is copyright by Judith A. Meier and is included here
with the permission of the author.
The history of the Norris City Cemetery goes back, not to an early cemetery or
even an early church, but rather to a long-forgotten school house.
A very early school serving the eastern part of the township was, according to an
1815 tax-exemption certificate, “one farm, adjoining the property of Enoch
Supplee and others, containing 20 perches, and having thereon one small school
house of stone one stories and a burying ground. Note the above house is used as
a house of worship as well as a schoolhouse.” This school, on the property of
the Supplee family near the present corner of Swede Road and Norris City Avenue,
was established before 1780, since a deed of that time refers to the “school
house lot” as one of the boundaries.
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John Supplee had been teaching in the school for several years until 1834, when
he opened another school in Norristown near the Bank of Montgomery County.
Another teacher, Lorenzo Dow Fowler, died in 1841 at the age of 21 and was
buried near the school house. The inscription on his tomb read:
How short a course our friend has run.
Cut down in all his bloom:
The race but yesterday begun,
Has ended in the tomb.
Prior to the founding of the First Methodist Church of Norristown in 1834, the
Methodists occasionally held services at the Supplee school house in Norriton.
A notice in The Norristown Weekly Register of September 8, 1824, announced:
Divine Service is to be held in the woods in Norriton township, near Supplee’s
School-house, on Sunday the 26th of this month, at the hours of 10 in the morning,
and 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
Four years later the Herald proclaimed on October 8, 1828:
By Divine Permission the Rev. William Mann and Abel Stevens, a young boy about 13
years of age, will preach in the woods, near Supplee’s School-House, in Norriton
township, on Sunday the 12th instant, — Service to commence at 10 o’clock in the
morning and continues during the day — provided the weather should prove
favourable.
When old Enoch Supplee, the fulling mill owner and most recent owner of the
surrounding land, passed away in 1831, his heirs,
John Supplee, Susanna Jones,
and
Mary Supplee, put all the Supplee property up for sale, and John Supplee left
the Norriton school for a new one in the borough.
Since activities at Supplee’s School House seemed to be closely related to
activities at the new Methodist Episcopal Church in Norristown, it is interesting
to follow the contemporary newspaper coverage of its development. On September
25, 1833, the editor of the Norristown Herald made the following disclosure under
the headline, "Methodist Meeting House."
We understand the Methodist quarterly meeting conference of Germantown has
appointed
John Supplee, Samuel Supplee, and Nathan Supplee, a committee for the
purpose of purchasing a lot and erecting a Meeting-House thereon for the
Methodist Episcopal Church, in this Borough. The committee have bargained for a
lot and are about making collections for the building. The money will be
deposited in the Bank of Montgomery County.
The January 14, 1835, Norristown Free Press carried the following notice:
The basement story of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Norristown, will be opened
for service, on Saturday, the 24th of January, inst., at half past 10 o’clock,
and is expected to continue for several days, at which time there will be
collections taken up to aid in defraying the expenses of the building. Several
persons are expected there to officiate in the service, the brethren and friends
are particularly invited to attend. — Wm. Gentner.
This was followed on January 31 by a notice that read:
In consequence of not being able to obtain Ministers on Saturday next, the
basement story of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Norristown, will not be
opened for Divine Service, until Sabbath morning, at half past 10 o’clock, at
which time it is expected that the Rev. Mr. Charles Pitman, or the Rev. Mr. James
Brooks Ayrres, will attend... The meeting will continue through the week and
perhaps longer.
With the coming of warm weather, there was a return to woods meetings in Norriton.
The Free Press announced on June 3, 1835:
WOODS MEETING. There will be a meeting held in the woods adjoining Supplee’s
School House, near Norristown, next Sabbath, to commence at 8 o’clock in the
morning, and continue through the day. It is expected Ministering Brethren will
be there from Philadelphia.
The woods meetings seemed to have been an arm of the borough church, for an
announcement in the June 24, 1835, paper stated:
Mr. Watson, a lad about 17 years of age, is expected to preach in the Methodist E.
Church in the borough of Norristown next Sabbath morning at 10 o’clock. In the
afternoon there will be preaching in the woods near Supplee’s School House, about
1 1/2 miles from Norristown, at which time there will be a collection taken up
towards defraying the expenses of the seats.
By April 1837 the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Norristown were
ready to rent out one half of their basement for a school room. Another woods
meeting was scheduled for August 15 and 16, 1840, “in the woods opposite John
Supplee’s school House ... commencing Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock.” The Rev.
John G. Wilson and John. S. Christman and others from Philadelphia were expected
to lead the services.
With the passage of the Common School Law the Norriton School District purchased
the school house, but the usage of the property apparently proceeded as before.
The Norristown Herald and Free Press of July 29, 1846, carried the following
notice:
By Divine permission, there will be a wood meeting held in the Woods directly back
of Supplee’s School house on the State Road, 1 mile from Norristown, on next
Sabbath, the 2nd of August, to commence at 3 o’clock P.M. The Rev. Daniel L.
Patterson will preach on the occasion. A collection will be taken up for the
benefit of the Sabbath School at that place.
The school house property, however, had already been put up fro sale several
months before this time when the secretary of the Norriton School board announced
the sale of “two lots of land containing 37 perches on which is erected a School
House (known by the name of Supplee’s) situate in Norriton township fronting on
the State Road and about 1 1/2 a mile from Norristown.” On September 14, 1847,
ownership was transferred from the School District to the trustees of the
Methodist Episcopal Church of Norristown for use as a burying ground. Supplee
family members had been buried there for years.
By this time there was strong pressure from Norristown citizens to prevent the
opening of new cemeteries within the borough limits. Montgomery Cemetery,
incorporated in 1848 and carefully located just over the borough line in what is
now West Norriton, was the first new burial ground to comply.
A second cemetery company, chartered as The Norris City Cemetery, purchased a
portion of the former Rossiter farm on Swede Road in (East) Norriton from Oscar
and Friedericka Reichenbach in May of 1858. This purchase included two tracts of
land and a strip of land, containing 22 acres 34 perches, reserving out of it the
ground belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church used as their burying ground
and also reserving a right of way to Scheetz’s mill road. Soon thereafter the
cemetery company obtained the adjoining Supplee property from the Methodist
Church. The Norris City Cemetery eventually contained approximately 28 acres,
with lots measuring 8 by 16 feet. The first 200 lots were sold for $10 a piece.
The first burial was made in 1858.
The Supplee family burials were removed to the new cemetery, together with others
buried in the old school house yard. The last major land transaction took place
eighteen years later (1876) when the cemetery company granted the right of
interment to the First Methodist Church of Norristown of lots 155 to 178
inclusive. The corner property, formerly belonging to the Church and once
belonging to old
Andrew Supplee, was sold to
Valentine Henning. Farmland
eventually covered the site of the old one-story stone school and meeting house
and the Supplee family graveyard.
The first officers of The Norris City Cemetery were
Henry L. Acker, president;
John Stout, secretary; and Andrew Cochran and Jacob Monk, managers.
A stone chapel with a steeple was built on the highest elevation. By the 1920s it
had deteriorated, and it eventually was razed. Some of the stones from that old
chapel are still in the back yard of a home on Norris City Avenue.
When
John S. Bond of Bridgeport died in 1892, his will directed that a trust fund
of $1000 be established to care for his lot. By 1940 this fund had increased to
$3147.16. The Orphans Court ruled that $1320 of this be used for building a road
in the vicinity of the Bond plot and another $180 for improvement of the site.
For many years there existed an agreement with the adjoining Norristown State
Hospital that two acres of cemetery land could be farmed in exchange for hospital
personnel’s care of the cemetery grounds.
A number of military veterans are buried at Norris City Cemetery, including one
from the Philippine Insurrection, 20 from the Spanish American War, 138 from the
Civil War, 20 from World War I, two from World War II, and one from the Korean
Campaign.