SHATTERED REPOSE
Cemetery Situation Under Investigation
Shenandoah Journal
February 26, 2013
By SAMANTHA COLE
One of Robin Scott’s concerns is that the children of the daycare operated by Brown Memorial Community Church are
playing on the graves located on the premises. (Photo by Samantha Cole)
Nearly 300 years ago, Heinrich Preisch brought his family to the United States. Robin Scott, his fifth-great-granddaughter is
now concerned his grave isn’t being treated as it should. (Photo by Samantha Cole)
Two hundred and seventy five years ago, Heinrich Preisch brought his family from Offenbach,
Germany, to the United States.
Six months ago, Robin Scott brought her father, Rodney Price, from Roanoke to visit the cemetery
where she and cousin Kenneth Moore erected a marker dedicated to their fifth-great-grandfather’s
grave.
What they found — a cemetery falling into disrepair — has haunted them since.
(Six Feet) Under Investigation
“PREISCH ... Died 1797,” the gravestone for Scott’s ancestor reads. Just beyond it rests basketballs
and dodge balls, on an afternoon while children at the Brown Memorial Child Care Program play.
Brown Memorial Community Church, on Town Hall Road in McGaheysville, is built at least partially
on a Revolutionary War-era cemetery, according to Billie Jo Monger, retired certified genealogist and
descendant of 1733 Valley settlers.
Soldiers are buried there, she says — three companies of 80 men each.
“That whole place you’re standing on is a graveyard,” she said, of the swath of property now owned
by the church.
Locals know it as Peaked Mountain Church cemetery, named for the church that formerly stood
down the hill.
Scott claims that BMCC did not adhere to the deed drafted in 1962, which includes an agreement
stating that the ground remain “in as good condition as cemeteries in McGaheysville and the
vicinage are usually kept and will keep the said cemetery in the same good condition.”
In the 60s, the church built an addition on top of graves, Scott and Monger say. In the building
process, Scott believes grave markers were pulled up and tossed aside.
“I’m looking for a way to reach out to other people and allied families to let them know what’s going
on,” she said.
“I just don’t think a church should pull up markers at will ... I think that’s desecration in its ugliest
form.”
Pastor Glenn Steiner of BMCC declined to comment.
According to Chief Deputy Commonwealth Attorney Clark Ritchie, the allegations are currently under
investigation. Relocating gravesites is an issue that “pops up now and then with new development,”
he said.
Toying With History
Scott is also particularly concerned that children at the daycare are playing on the graves, after
finding toys and pencils strewn among the markers.
However, supervisors at the BMCC after-school daycare Feb. 20 said that the children were given
boundaries; they were not to venture into the graveyard.
The recently installed basketball court, Scott and Monger said, is also built on top of graves.
As progress marches on, Monger said although she’s shed tears for destroyed historic properties in
the past, it’s difficult to see situations from another perspective.
“People tend to do what they think is best with what they have to do with,” she said. “It’s easy for us
to go back and say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ but we didn’t live in their time, with their
circumstances.”
Scott, however, doesn’t plan to let the issue die. “It’s disturbing to me and I don’t think it’s fair, don’t
think it’s right.”
To get in touch with Robin Scott and other descendants of the Preisch family, visit
http://www.preischdescendants.com/.
Contact Samantha Cole at (540) 574-6274 or scole@dnronline.com.