History & local legend
Annie K. Gonder’s grave stands beside the circular drive in Strasburg Cemetery, near the tree at its center. She died in 1918, three years after her brother Benjamin, the railroad businessman who built Gonder Mansion. Her small granite marker faces away from the other family stones.
Local tradition blames that arrangement on Benjamin’s wife, Mary. In the story, Mary had kept Annie at a distance during her life and arranged the burial as one last rejection. Visitors have reported strange lights near the grave and the outline of a woman among the headstones.
The Pennsylvania Rambler’s writer photographed the marker during a foggy visit and noticed how closely the road passed it. He suggested that paving work might instead explain why the stone had been turned, though he could not establish when or why its position changed.
