"Reprint and index" copy by Gary T. Hawbaker compiled in 1993
Summary
Squire Thon was born in Germany in 1807. He kept a diary from 1847 until his death in 1888. He was well known in the county. His diary entries appeared in the Lancaster New Era newspaper for several years. His title of Squire came from his service as Justice of the Peace in Lancaster Township for 25 years
"Death with it accompanying rite is one area in which the church still exerts a strong influence. In rural Cumberland County, interment frequently takes place in the yard of the church where the deceased held membership, and a number of local churches still provide free burial space for members. The days when thefamily burial ground was located at the ancestral homestead are long past but such sites, often fenced and well tended but occasionally overgrown with green briers,can still be seen at the corner or even in the center of a cultivated field. Since the 1930's, however, more and more families are acquiring lots in public cemeteries ,but even there, for a long while, family plots weresometimes surrounded with ornate cast iron fencing,prompting less ostentatious plot owners to wonder iffthe fence was there to keep other people out or to keep those people in. The difficulty of mowing and maintaining such plots eventually led to the prohibitionand even the removal of such individual fences. " [from the text]
