Lasting Legacy
OAKLAND TWP — Some families pass down heirlooms. For Phyllis Whitmire Fry and Barbara Whitmire Wick, the sisters' legacy was a graveyard.
They are caretakers for the private cemetery, considered one of the oldest in Butler County, which holds the graves of veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam era.
Fry lives less than 200 yards away from the property and can see her son James' grave from her window. Wick lives across the road.
Fry said the Whitmire Family Cemetery was started by the patriarch of the Whitmire family, Francis Whitmire, a Revolutionary War veteran who moved to Butler County in 1789 from Berks County to work a 1,000-acre farm. He set aside the half-acre cemetery and was the first to be buried in it in 1832.
The family and the cemetery have been growing every since.
Fry said, “It's not a public cemetery. It's a private family cemetery. It's registered at the courthouse.
“The family can still bury people, but we can't sell plots,” she said.
The last burial was May 22, when Barbara Wick's husband, David, was laid to rest.
But Fry and her husband, Samuel, who mows the property, are unsure of just how many relations are in the cemetery.
Fry said, “We've counted 40 stones, but often a husband and wife were marked with one stone.
“And there's an empty spot where we are assuming there were burials with no markers because of the way the ground is. There's never been a map made, so we don't know for sure,” she added.
“There's no maps, no records,” Fry said. “I don't think it was important to people then. It is more important to our generation.
“They just took care of their own lives. Basically they were all farmers,” Fry said.
And some of the stones that are in the cemetery are in need of some repair. Some are so old it's hard to make out the lettering. Some of the monuments have toppled over, victims of time and frost.
The family has set a work day for Saturday to spruce up the grounds and maybe put some of the gravestones to rights.
Fry said her daughter, Cindy Fry Wulff's husband, Gary, is bringing some heavy equipment to help with the work.
“We are hoping to right some of the stones that are down,” Fry said.
The Wulffs live in a 200-year-old farmhouse on 67 acres that is all that is left of Francis Whitmire's original 1,000-acre property.Barbara Wick said, “ The original farm was divided and divided among the sons.”As the farm acreage dwindled, the Whitmire relatives and descendants multiplied. Still, some return to the cemetery in the end.Wick said, “Some want to be buried with their parents.”Fry said, “We have never stopped any family member wanting to be buried here. They do not pay anything.”Fry said usually a funeral home will contact her or her sister when a relative has a request to be buried in the family cemetery.Fry and Wick said their children will take over the oversight of the family cemetery in the future.Wick has two sons, Steven and Martin Wick, and a daughter, Brenda Wick Stouffer.Fry and Wick said there will be a memorial service at the cemetery at 7 p.m. Saturday with the ceremonial guard from Lyndora American Legion Post 778 giving a salute to the veterans buried there and Boy Scout Troop 30 from Oakland Township presenting the colors.The ceremony is open to the public.Fry noted that her family even has a connection to the Bantam Jeep Festival going on this weekend.“My father, Samuel, did not go to war. He was in what was considered a vital industry. He built Bantam Jeeps in Butler. He got a certificate from the Army thanking him for building them,” she said.
