Historic Cemetery Tour

The history of St. Luke's began on the night of November 29, 1841 when a group of thirteen citizens of Lincolnton gathered in the Pleasant Retreat Academy and formed a congregation to be known as St. Luke's Church. The deed to the land was transferred on March 2, 1842 from Col. John Hoke to the trustees of St. Luke's Church. One week later, on March 9, the cornerstone of the first church was laid. The church was consecrated on July 29, 1843 by the Right Reverend Levi Silliman Ives, the second Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina. St. Luke's was admitted into the diocese at the convention of 1843 and became a part of the Diocese of Western North Carolina in 1922.

St. Luke's historic churchyard came into use with the building of the church in 1842. The earliest group of gravestones date from the 1850s to the 1870s. There are two adjoining cast iron fences that date from the late 1860s and enclose the graves of Major General Stephen Dodson Ramseur (1837 to 1864) and William (d. 1863) and Edward (d. 1864) Phifer, all of whom died in the Civil War while fighting for the Confederacy. Ramseur, the youngest Major General in the Confederate Army was mortally wounded and died at the age of 27 after the Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia. The white marble obelisk of General Ramseur's grave was damaged during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. A replica of the obelisk, by Wiley Brothers, was erected at the grave in 1991. Several rows to the east of the Ramseur fence is the grave of William Alexander Hoke (1851 to 1925), who was elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1904 as an associate justice and served as chief justice of North Carolina until 1925. In a corner of the churchyard, at the church's west, rear elevation, is a monument in the form of a six-legged table that marks the remains of Lorenzo Ferrer (1780 to 1875), a native of Lyons, France.

There is a group of signed stones dating from 1850 to 1881. The most important signed monument was created at the well-known marble yard of J. Baird, Philadelphia, who supplied gravestones for elite members of North Carolina society in the antebellum period. It is the monument for Caroline Rebecca Guion who died in childbirth in 1854. The tomb is surmounted by an obelisk that reads "Caroline Rebecca, Guion, and her Babe". Carved into an oval on the west side of Guion's monument is a recumbent figure that is summoned to heaven by an angel in the form of a winged babe and inscribed "and they departed together on the 11th of September 1843".

Address

315 N Cedar Street
Lincolnton, NC 28092

The first deed recorded in Lincolnton for a church was on January 10, 1788, and included two acres of land at a cost of ten shillings plus tax. This lot would be the site of the Dutch Meeting House, the Old White Church, and the first brick church. Reverend John Gottfried Arends arrived in Lincoln County in 1785 to organize the local Lutherans. Reverend Arends died in 1807 and was buried under the Dutch Meeting House. The first person buried in the cemetery is believed to be Thomas Perkins, but some say that his name is Thomas Hawkditch. We know that he was pushed or fell from a window of the old court house, and a rough unmarked stone covers his grave.

Emmanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery is enclosed by a decorative fence donated by Peggy and Mercer Simmons. Just inside the main gates, at the cemetery's west elevation, is the John Hoke Family tomb, which is currently being restored. This is a below-ground tomb with steps that lead to a large chamber where caskets were once held before burial.

The cemetery's earliest gravestone is a small soapstone tablet for Christian Zimmerman, who was buried on November 13, 1792. Reverend Arends, the church's first pastor, died in 1807, and the inscription on his gravestone is written in German. Elizabeth Schrum Little, buried on December 14, 2013, is the most recent burial. Other notable burials include Anna Mary Thomson who died September 25, 1851, John Cline on April 2, 1857, Charles Cotesworth Henderson on February 18, 1869 and Clara Rhodes Smyre on December 18, 1968.

The church's cemetery committee, along with their youth group, have been conserving gravestones and monuments in the cemetery.

Address

216 S Aspen Street
Lincolnton, NC 28092

The Old Methodist Cemetery, located at the intersection of South Aspen Street and West Congress Street, belongs to First United Methodist Church. The 1.62-acre site, enclosed by a chain-link fence, is about five blocks from the First United Methodist Church building on East Main Street in downtown Lincolnton.

Reverend James Hill, the first pastor of what is now First United Methodist Church, died in 1828 and was the first person to be buried in the picturesque cemetery. At the time of his burial, the Methodist church was known as the Lincolnton Circuit, and it was a part of the South Carolina Conference. Nancy Elizabeth Mullen, who died in 1944, was the last person buried in the cemetery. There are approximately 242 gravestones and monuments in the cemetery, and some unmarked gravestones are believed to be for slaves. Two or three of the gravestones are outside the fence.

After the last burial in 1944, interest in the cemetery declined greatly. Although the cemetery is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, by the second half of the twentieth century many church members were unaware of its presence.

In a 1958 paper, Dorothy Crowell wrote "The Second Quarterly Conference, April 9, 1944 reports the establishment of the "Old Cemetery Fund" to beautify the old church property after the war is over." Many people had contributed to this fund, especially those whose family members are buried in the cemetery, although they were not members of the church at that time.

Members of the congregation began a conservation project in 2015 with several members meeting at the heavily-shaded cemetery to learn how to properly clean gravestones. The group began their project by properly cleaning Rev. James Hill's soapstone tablet. They have repaired the gate that encircles the cemetery and have trimmed trees inside the cemetery. The revitalization project is ongoing, and First United Methodist hopes to have some church activities at the cemetery in coming years. An inventory of the cemetery's gravestones and monuments can be found in Appendix D of the church's new book First United Methodist Church Lincolnton, North Carolina - A Bicentennial History.

Many of the gravestones are firmly mounted to the ground, clean and lichen-free while others are illegible and in need of conservation. Some have sustained damage from vandalism or, more likely, from the growth of roots from large adjacent trees. The cemetery's gravestones are a combination of unmarked fieldstones and large marble and granite obelisks.

Address

402 S Aspen Street
Lincolnton, NC 28092