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Lydia Hirner, manager of the Forty Fort Cemetery, talks to a tour group about the Hoyt gravesite.

Jonathan J. Juka/for the times leader

FORTY FORT — Lance and Sandy Kittelson spent Saturday afternoon working on their to-do list, but they weren’t cutting the grass or planning a Fourth of July barbecue. Instead, the Shickshinny couple toured the Forty Fort Meeting House and cemetery and learned about the men and women who played prominent roles in the history of America and the Wyoming Valley for more than 200 years.
The 201-year-old meeting house is open to the public each Sunday from Memorial Day through Labor Day, but one weekend per month during the summer, guided tours including the Forty Fort Cemetery are available. It was this tour that drew the Kittelsons.
“I’m interested in local history and coming here has been on our list for years. We decided to take a break from the yardwork and take advantage of the opportunity to tour,” said Lance Kittelson. Noting how easy it is to take nearby historical places for granted, Kittelson said he enjoyed the tour. “It was very interesting and well-presented,” he said.
Credit for the fact-packed tour went to Committee for the Preservation of the Forty Fort Meeting House member Nancy Lychos and Forty Fort Cemetery manager Lydia Hirner. Lychos took visitors through the meeting house with its hand-turned columns and hand-crafted white pine woodwork that appears richly stained.
“It’s darkened from age,” said Lychos, “but it’s never been painted. This is the original wood.”
In fact, most of the building is original, affording visitors the opportunity to sit in the same church pews as the Denisons, the Swetlands, and other families that played a huge role in making the West Side what it is today. “We are important because we are the first completed religious edifice in Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Lychos told visitors. “We’re sitting where this area’s earliest settlers sat.”
After an opportunity to peer up at the arched window behind the 12-foot pulpit and imagine sitting through a two-to-three-hour church service on hard, straight-backed wooden pews, visitors followed Hirner to the cemetery to visit about a dozen of the 14,000 gravesites in the cemetery dating back to 1771.
Among the thousands buried in the cemetery are: a Pennsylvania governor; small children buried under stones made to resemble beds; a man executed for treason and later vindicated; a female poet with a wild side; veterans of military service dating to the Revolutionary War; people so important to local history that streets are named after them to this day; even two American Indians buried under hand-carved stones bearing symbols no one has yet translated. Hirner provided an hour-long commentary of the area’s history dating back more than 200 years.
If you go:

Tours of the Forty Fort Meeting House and the Forty Fort Cemetery will be held today at 1 and 3 p.m. The tour takes about an hour and a half and costs $5. The meeting house and cemetery are located at the intersection of Wyoming Avenue and River Street in Forty Fort. The Forty Fort Meeting House is open each Sunday during the summer from 1 to 3 pm and visitors can self-tour the cemetery. Cost is $2.