History & local legend
Patterson Cemetery once stood near the old Presbyterian church in the area of Beaver Falls now called Lincoln Place. Stone pillars marked its entrance until Seventh Avenue was graded. The town's centennial history records that the Patterson and Reeves families later moved relatives to other cemeteries, while some graves remained.
James C. Reynolds collected local reports of moaning and wailing from the old burial ground. One explanation attributed the voices to Native people said to have been buried there without coffins. That identification belonged to the local legend; the community history records the family burials and the cemetery's gradual disappearance beneath the changing town.
Sources
- James C. Reynolds, The Last of the Ghosts, stories from the Valley Tribune (1986), reprinted in Milestones (1995), on the accounts of crying and wailing at the old Patterson cemetery
- Beaver Falls Area Centennial, cemeteries section, Patterson, including exact gate, the stone pillars, removals and remaining bodies
- Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Beaver Falls in November 1891, sheet 7, documents both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches between 8th and 9th streets
- OpenStreetMap, Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue, location of the former gate named by the local centennial history
