MINERSVILLE - While no one knows exactly where the borough's first settler is buried in Union Cemetery, anyone passing the hilltop site will know Thomas Reed is there.
The Minersville Area Historical Society dedicated a new memorial stone near the entrance of the cemetery on Fifth Street on Sunday with a ceremony that featured Reed's descendants.
"It's an honor for us as a family to be commemorated here and really important the town remembers its roots," Frank Reed Jr. said.
Coming from Seattle to speak at the ceremony, Reed Jr. is one of Thomas Reed's direct descendants.
"It's really important that the town understands the genesis of where they came from - the thing that made them what they are," Reed said. "To paraphrase what a certain president (Abraham Lincoln) once said: 'They will little remember what was said here, but what's important is to remember what happened here today.' This is in remembrance of someone who made that trek and decided that this was where he wanted to live the rest of his life."
Reed built a home and a sawmill on the west branch of the Schuylkill River in 1793, according to The Republican-Herald archives. He then built a tavern and hotel that became known as the "Red House" or the "Half-Way House" by those traveling between Reading and Sunbury.
Deborah Nouzovsky, cemetery historian, said Reed is one of about 1,000 people who have been buried in Union Cemetery, including many children and veterans of five wars. Nouzovsky said the first death in the borough was a postal worker who was buried there. Thomas Reed donated the land behind his hotel as a place for him to be buried. When Reed died in 1814, he was laid to rest next to the postal worker. That exact location in the cemetery is unknown, Nouzovsky said.
Dora Santarelli, president of the Minersville Area Historical Society, said the memorial stone has been talked about since the organization's first meeting in 2006.
"Our mission to preserve history included this fold: To remember Thomas Reed with a memorial stone," Santarelli said. "With this memorial, we and our descendants can retain remembrance of Minersville's very beginning. Recognizing and remembering our first settler with this memorial reflects our community values and unique heritage."
The historical society has sponsored several fundraisers for more than four years to buy the memorial stone, Marian Twigg, chairperson of the Thomas Reed Committee said. To her surprise, Mark Mahal, supervisor at Mahal-Ritzel Funeral Home Inc., Minersville, then announced that he will pay for the memorial and its installation on the condition that the money raised by the committee be used toward future landscaping at the cemetery.
"All too often you hear what is wrong with our town, that it's not the Minersville that it once was," Mahal said. "Well in many ways it is all too true at times, but that does not mean that the pride no longer exits. There are good people in Minersville who still care about this little town."
Mahal made the donation in memory of his grandmother, Anne Hahn, who passed away about two years ago.
"Up until the day she passed away at 98 years old, my grandmother was one of those people who truly cared," he said. "She was very involved in the community until the day she died and I thought that I had to do something."