Hi,
     Thank you so much for posting the tour of the cemetery with all the interesting information about the tombstones and those buried there. Fascinating. One of my ancestors, Thomas Wilson, is buried in the cemetery and I was pleased to find a picture of his stone on the online tour. John Duff is also one of my ancestors. Is it possible to add a picture of his stone to the online tour? Several years ago I arranged for the VA to provide a new stone for him, finding out after it was set that they had listed him as serving in the NY militia during the Rev. War. This was incorrect, as he served in the York Co., PA militia. The stone was corrected and reset. John Duff, along with others, was one of the founding fathers of Beulah Church and signed the letter calling for Rev. James Graham to serve Beulah.
      I was especially impressed by the church's home page. It is easy to use, colorful, and full of information demonstrating Beulah's commitment to faith and service.
     Sincerely,
           Ron Wilson - Florida Society, Sons of the American Revolution

William McMannis buried in Beulah Presbyterian Church Cemetery

Feb 2004
     I was delighted to read what Ron Wilson has contributed. He mentioned that John Duff was his ancestor; I have copies of several early maps of Penn Twp. showing property owned by some of the Duff family abutting that of some of my McMannis family, and they would surely have known each other. I shall enjoy sharing this with Mr. Wilson, thanks to your making his e-mail address available.
     The Cemetery webpage is not only interesting--it's also valuable, and has my wholehearted appreciation.

Some years ago, visiting the Beulah Church in researching my McMannis ancestry of the area, we were told its early records no longer exist but that an elderly William McMannis is said to have been buried there in 1812, in a "borrowed grave", its location unknown.

Though lacking proof, my research appears to strongly indicate that this William would be my 4th-great-grandfather McMannis, relative to my 2nd & 3rd (both also named William) enumerated from 1800 in the census of Pitt Twp. and later Wilkins. (Some descendants are buried in Hebron Cemetery, just north of Beulah Church.)

The church office gave me a booklet with a self-guiding-tour map of the cemetery, but with the grave's location not known I didn't make the tour. However, looking through the map at a later time, I noticed the name "McMarris" at grave #65 (beside #31of the tour route, no marker). That I have never come upon this spelling in my research--nor can find it anywhere at all on the internet!--would seem to indicate "McMarris" is a non-existent name. It is quite significant that in the pen-script of that period, the lower-case letters 'r' and 'n' are often easily mistaken for each other. It seems not unreasonable to assume William "McMarris" recorded in the interment record was actually William McMannis.

My belief is further supported by the fact that when I telephoned the church office (c.1998) to inquire about William "McMarris", the lady who answered was kind enough to look for record of the name. She called back to say she located it and that the only information given is that he had served
in the military. Military record does exist of a William McMannis who in 1760 enlisted in the Revolutionary War in Westmoreland Co., PA--which is where my family was living at that time.

More recently, an interested former member of the church now living elsewhere wrote to me that a former pastor had once given her the information that he found William McMarris at #94 on page 5 of the interment book, and that the interment took place in 1812 in Section #1 of Beulah Cemetery.

Finally, it is interesting that in the book "Annals of Old Wilkinsburg and Vicinity" (by Davison & McKee) there is a chapter concerning the Beulah Church in which it is stated that "Martha McManus [my great-grandmother], wife of James McManus" [my great-grandfather], was among a group of members who left Beulah to establish the more convenient First Presbyterian Church
of Wilkinsburg (since sold).

Altogether, my research seems to indicate that Beulah Cemetery's elderly William McMannis was the father of my ancestor William McMannis enumerated in 1800, who was the grandfather of my great-grandfather James McMannis.

Gloria Pace   dgpace AT visuallink.com