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When Boy Scout Troop 111 showed up, you could hardly tell there was a cemetery carved out of an opening in a lightly wooded area off Greensburg Road. The grass and weeds were several feet high. Fallen tree limbs lay scattered about. Junked cars sat near the entrance. Even getting into the cemetery was difficult because of the condition of the dirt road leading up to it.
The tops of some tombstones were barely visible. Some had been knocked over. Many were overgrown, and weren't discovered until the Scouts cut the grass.
"It was a mess," Scoutmaster Bob Russell said.
That was summer 2004.
Today, Dugan's Cemetery looks nothing like it did before the Scouts began their work. The grass is cut. The tree limbs have been removed. The tombstones sit upright and visible. Daffodils are growing.
A wooden sign the Scouts erected identifies the burial ground, which dates to the Revolutionary War era. A Revolutionary War soldier is buried at the site, according to what little documentation is available about the cemetery.
There's something nostalgic about visiting, something about the history there, albeit one that's mostly forgotten. It conjures images of what the area might have been like 100 or 200 years ago, who the families were, where they settled and what the landscape looked like.
Many of the headstones are easily legible, and much more detailed than today's tombstones. You have the Smiths, Alters, Millers, Skinners, Yetkas, and at least a dozen other family names.
The hillside cemetery -- about 2.7 acres -- contains about 100 graves. About 3.2 acres have been set aside for future use.
The problem, one encountered by Altoona resident Larry Smith, is that no one knows if future burials at the cemetery are possible. The last known burial was in 1992.
The cemetery isn't tied to a church, Smith said. It's unclear who founded it.
Smith, a Lower Burrell native who has several family members buried there, first visited the cemetery in February 2004. He went to take pictures to send to his aging aunt in California, Sara Smith Phillips.
Phillips, 90, had inquired about the cemetery, asking Smith if there were any plots available near where the other members of the family were buried. As a result, Smith found himself in the midst of a quest to answer several questions, among them who owned the cemetery, if it would be possible to bury someone there, and where the cemetery records are located.
Two years later, Smith's questions are still largely unanswered.
According to borough records, the last record of any change in ownership of the cemetery was in 1950. The paperwork doesn't list a seller or buyer, only a trustee, J.R. Alter.
Harry Schlegel, borough tax collector, said a key reason why very little documentation exists about the cemetery is because it's tax-exempt. Because there's no tax bill to be sent out, there's little need to keep a detailed record of ownership, he said.
"These are forgotten pieces of property because they're tax-exempt," Schlegel said. "We don't pay a lot of attention to these, and the county doesn't pay a lot of attention because there's no one to send a bill to. The owner or trustee could be long gone. The heirs aren't responsible."
According to Allegheny County records, the property is assessed at $39,000.
Smith said part of what he's after is to have the borough assume responsibility for the cemetery.
"This cemetery is either abandoned or owned," he said. "If it's abandoned, we've got to get the courts to declare that it's abandoned and take direction on how to ensure it will get taken care of."
"I don't want to claim (the cemetery)," Smith added. "I don't want anything to do with owning it. I just want someone to declare that it's going to be used or closed down."
Plum Borough Manager Mike Thomas couldn't be reached by phone for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Smith has placed an ad in the Valley News Dispatch requesting that anyone who has a relative buried at Dugan's Cemetery or is in any way connected to attend a gathering on May 5 at Buffalo Bill's restaurant in New Kensington.
"I'd like to know who they are and what family they have buried at the cemetery," he said. "I want to document this on the record for the future. What if another 10 years passes and there's no one left who expresses any interest in the cemetery?"
Smith said he was so dismayed by what he found when he visited the cemetery in 2004 that he couldn't bear to send the photos to his aunt.
The work that the Scouts have done since then has been phenomenal, he said.
"I just couldn't get over it," he said. "Their work was just great."
Russell said it was his son, Bobby, who decided to rehabilitate the cemetery as part of his Eagle Scout project.
More than 270 man-hours were dedicated to the project, Russell said, among the Scouts and adult leaders. Troop members and leaders now go out twice each year to take care of the cemetery, a task beyond the scope of the original Eagle Scout project.
Russell said the troop plans to take care of the cemetery indefinitely.
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