Hickory Grove Cemetery

This quiet hilltop cemetery in what was once called Abington Center holds some of northeastern Pennsylvania's most significant hidden history. Established in eighteen oh seven, Hickory Grove became a burial ground for formerly enslaved people, many of whom arrived here by way of the Underground Railroad in the mid-nineteenth century.

By the end of that century, seventy-five formerly enslaved people had made their lives in the surrounding community of Waverly. The cemetery is one of the oldest known African American burial grounds in the region, and it stands as tangible evidence of a freedom community that took root far from the Mason-Dixon Line. The people buried here reached this place at great risk and built lives that the historical record barely preserved.