The cemetery at St. Mary’s Church in Barnesville is rapidly running out of room for residents who want to be buried in the same place as their ancestors.
The small Catholic church is hoping to expand its 2-acre cemetery by an acre to accommodate the demand from its more than 900 members, according to parishioner Jack Drescher. The church’s Barnesville Road property encompasses more than 12 acres, according to state property records.
‘‘We’re running out of room to bury people who have been here forever,” Drescher said last week. ‘‘...It’s pretty much filled up.”
Garland Johnson, chairman of St. Mary’s finance council, was unsure how many people have been buried at St. Mary’s but said cemeteries typically accommodate about 300 graves per acre.
The nearest Catholic cemeteries in the county are St. Rose of Lima in Gaithersburg and All Souls Cemetery in Germantown, according to the 2004 Montgomery County Cemetery Inventory. In addition to St. Mary’s, there are three family cemeteries and one historic church graveyard in Barnesville.
The inventory lists St. Mary’s as having more than 500 graves.
The land designated for the expansion is part of a 2-acre tract behind the cemetery, Drescher said. It was donated about 10 years ago by the Hilton family, he said, which built the current church after the original was destroyed by a fire in 1900.
Barnesville officials held a public meeting April 1 to introduce the expansion request, and the town’s three-member appeals committee will decide whether to grant a special exception for the project at a meeting on April 25, according to town Commissioner and committee head Luke Fedders. The town’s planning board will meet before the hearing to make a non-binding recommendation, he said.
Several church representatives attended last week’s meeting, and Fedders said he was not aware of any opposition to the project.
‘‘We’ve had a lot of demand for expansion of the cemetery,” said the Rev. Msgr. Thomas Kane, the church’s administrator. ‘‘We have no more grave sites to offer – they’re all used up.”
Kane also said he had not heard of any opposition.
The cemetery, which Drescher said has not expanded since it was dedicated in 1820, has a rich history. Zachariah Knott, an early church leader who donated land, was the first person buried, and it is the final resting place for soldiers from both sides of the Civil War, according to material provided by St. Mary’s. Irish and Italian Catholics building the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal killed in a cholera epidemic were also buried there in mass unmarked graves.
And many residents who grew up in the church want to be part of that history, Drescher said. The cemetery will continue to be open to the entire community after the proposed expansion, according to Kane and Johnson.
‘‘They’re hoping to be buried at St. Mary’s, too,” Drescher said.
public hearing
To attend Barnesville will hold a public hearing to discuss the cemetery expansion 7 p.m. April 25 at Town Hall, 18001 Barnesville Road. For more information, e-mail townbarnesville@aol.com.
