History of Slate Hill Cemetery
Slate Hill Cemetery, with its sister cemetery in Fallsington, are the oldest cemeteries in Bucks County, but this one has the oldest documented tombstone in Bucks County: 1698. On the same day, both cemeteries were granted to Falls Meeting by Thomas Janney in 1690. A second section of Slate Hill Cemetery came from his son, Abel in 1720, and a third “public” section from Colonel Joshua Anderson in 1790. We know from wills that some of the original settlers of Lower Makefield Township rest here. William Yardley who died in a smallpox epidemic specified his burial in “Ye old Slate Hill burial ground” in 1693, which suggests its use from the earliest settlements c.1679. The Falls Friends Meeting donated their two sections with the original deeds of all three sections to Lower Makefield Township in 1992 as part of the township’s Tri-Centennial Celebration.
Slate Hill Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1992, and now is under the care of Lower Makefield Township and it’s Historical Commission. The LMT Historical Commission continues to research those buried in the cemetery and maintains the cemetery’s walls and grounds with the help of LMT’s Public Works Department, scouts, youth groups, Veterans organizations, and clubs such as garden clubs, and Comcast Cares, who frequently enjoy its serenity at the southern edge of the Borough of Yardley.
In 2020 researchers confirmed the service records of six previously unknown Civil War soldiers buried at the cemetery. Two had illegible tombstones, but four had no tombstones at all. The Veteran’s Administration creates and replaces tombstones for known US soldiers as were documented by the Commission. A ceremony was held on September 25, 2020 for the six newly marked soldiers as we celebrated the service of at least 20 Civil War soldiers buried at Slate Hill. Nine were men who served in the United States Colored Troops. These were regiments comprised primarily of African American soldiers and one sailor. They returned to work on Lower Makefield Township farms after the war, and now lay in what was called the segregated or “public section” of the graveyard. Eleven other soldiers were white farmers, merchants, and hired hands in quarries or on the canal or local farms. Only one, was actually killed in the Civil War, dying from a sniper’s shot as he rode into battle. We hope to confirm that we have some Revolutionary War veterans or those of other US wars buried here.
Slate Hill Cemetery is one of the only intact colonial Quaker graveyards in Pennsylvania, if not the nation. The Commission continues to inform the community about its 340 years of history as they research the diverse population interred here..
1926 Historic Map
