Lions Club looks to clean, restore historic Apollo Cemetery

Back in the 1960s, it was enough for Apollo Area Lions Club members to take their own lawnmowers to cut the grass at the old Apollo Cemetery.

But not anymore.

Old trees have been uprooting some tombstones and threatening to swallow up the ownerless but historic cemetery in Kiski Township.

Vandals have toppled some headstones plus defaced the original mausoleum of one of the town’s most famous residents, Samuel McCartney Jackson, a Civil War general whose many battles included Gettysburg. He went on to become a state representative, senator and treasurer; president of the Apollo Savings Bank; and the maternal grandfather of the actor Jimmy Stewart.

“If we don’t take care of it, it’s going to grow over and cover up the town’s history,” said Tom Toland, secretary of the Apollo Area Lions Club and a former district governor for five area counties.

The Lions Club, which has been the primary caretaker, will hold a cleanup day at the cemetery from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday and is looking volunteers. But the group needs more than that given the annual $5,000 they pay in maintenance. More money and volunteers are needed for bigger projects such as cutting trees, restoration work and placement of fallen tombstones, according to Toland.

The numerous trees crowding the cemetery are hard to miss.

“If you had a professional tree cutter here, it would cost $100,000 to do all of the work,” said Toland.

The old-town graveyard sits behind Riverview Cemetery at the end of Highland Avenue, the latter of which shows its younger age with a sea of uniform-sized, rectangular headstones. The old Apollo Cemetery is filled with tombstones of various shapes, including a few stone-carved logs. Some of the more elaborate tombstones tower at least six feet. Most are still standing, but have aged with a sooty patina.

The graveyard was laid out in 1868, although some people were buried there much earlier, including Jane N. Leech, “who departed this life” in 1835.

Also buried there is the Honorable Judge Michael Cochran and his wife Catharine, parents of the renowned journalist Nellie Bly (pseudonym of Elizabeth Cochran). There are 85 Civil War veterans as well as World War I veterans among the estimated 1,200 grave sites.

“It’s our history, Apollo history, and it definitely needs preserved and taken care of,” said Denise Flickinger, president of the Apollo Historical Society and a member of the Lions. The society has organized popular history tours at the cemetery in recent years.

As for Gen. Jackson’s old mausoleum, it won’t be refurbished.

Jackson, who died in 1907, was buried in a large mausoleum along a horse and buggy road that ran from Kiski Avenue to the lip of the cemetery hill, which is now the back of cemetery. He was moved to Riverview Cemetery more than 50 years ago.

The area of his former mausoleum in the old Apollo Cemetery is not visible as it is over the hill from the main cemetery and overgrown. The road that led there was never paved and was let to grow wild with Jackson’s mausoleum empty, with the slate casket shelves visible. Graffiti and beverage bottles now litter the area where generations of teenagers have partied.

The Lions don’t expect to restore this lower portion of the cemetery but to focus on the grounds on top of the hill, according to Toland.