History & local legend
Haag Cemetery overlooks Bernville in Berks County, across Washington Street from the separate St. Thomas burial ground. Its history dates to an 1867 land sale by Jacob Haag. One of its most distinctive monuments is a carved soldier above the graves of George and Mary Fahrenbach.
George served in the 151st and 55th Pennsylvania Infantry during the Civil War. He died on December 6, 1919; Mary died on March 19, 1930. Their monument is the focus of a local story collected by the Pennsylvania Rambler in 2021.
Visitors are said to glimpse a woman wearing a gray dress and bonnet near the soldier. She disappears as soon as they notice her. Some local tellings identify the figure as Mary, returning to the grave she shares with George.
