A Tentative Timeline

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I've made a little timeline based on information from the City of Bowling Green site and the Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green site.

The first burial

 Two lots were purchased in 1811, according to the city site. They believe the first burial was in the same year. Another two lots were purchased in 1829.

First Presbyterian established

The city site states the church in the graveyard was erected in 1819. The website for the First Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green reads:

"[Reverend Joseph] Lapsley gathered the local Presbyterians (many of whom were relatives and friends from Rockbridge County, Virginia) and soon built a church in the public burying ground. Lapsley also taught school there but unfortunately lived only four years after the founding."

However, it continues on to say,

"Session records of the early years are sparse, giving no hint of how the church came to be in the cemetery and no indication of what happened to it. By the time the congregation's next full-time pastor arrived in 1831, the building was gone."

Well isn't that just a mystery? Hopefully I'll be able to find out something about the vanishing of the church in further research.

Wars

I thought it was important to add the dates of conflict to this timeline to put the graveyard into better perspective. The city site says the cemetery was almost at it's capacity in 1861, a year after the start of the Civil War. Capacity is a bit of a tenuous thing with cemeteries, but it gives at least a ballpark for when they stopped burying people here.

However, there's veterans of many wars buried here, and the calendar date of a war starting or ending doesn't necessarily indicate the amount or concentration of veterans buried in a location.

There will likely be more timelines in the future, since I'm sure there's more good dates and information available, but this serves to give a grasp of the span of the Pioneer Cemetery.

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