The Bupp’s Union Monument
Although Dr. Noah, Granville, Harry I., and others began searching for the grave of Casper Glattfelder even before the first reunion, and although they looked for a tombstone in a number of nearby graveyards, the evidence which they needed to satisfy them was not found. In December 1906 Dr. Noah told Granville that “I agree with you in the belief that Casper was buried at Bupp’s,” but belief was not enough. In his 1914 reunion report, Harry I. said that “the very important knowledge lacking is the burial place - where is Casper’s Grave? our deceased Bro. Granville devoted much time and labor in an earnest effort to solve this question, but without success.” He asked “all Glattfelders present here today to take this matter to heart, seriously, and assist during the coming year to solve it, if it be at all possible. Where is Casper buried?”
There matters rested until 1934, when Dr. Ezra C. Saylor, a dentist living in Berlin, Somerset county, visited Harry I. in an effort to learn more about the place of his forbear, Solomon, in the Casper Glattfelder family. He delivered an address at the 1935 reunion and, after visiting Bupp’s Union graveyard later on that day, stated that he had found there Casper’s tombstone and therefore the long-sought burial place. The marker he identified was a field stone, bearing an inscription which appeared to be Cpet Glfed and the dates 1721 and 1792. Harry I. visited the graveyard again and at the 1936 reunion presented what he believed was “the solution of the search we made for the past thirty years.”
The apparent discovery and conclusion soon proved to be none at all. Both Dr. Saylor and Harry I. quickly concluded that since estate records established conclusively that Casper died in 1775, this stone belonged to someone else. Writing to Millard some months later, Harry I. said he regretted his error and added that “we must continue looking for the truth about this unfinished part of our family records.”
Discovery of some new information and review of some that had long been available but ignored can be said to have “finished this part of our family records.”
When Shuster’s church baptismal register was discovered in 1947, it immediately became clear that the “Cpet Glfed” stone marked the grave, not of Casper the immigrant, but of his grandson, Casper, son of Henry Glatfelter, who was born in 1791, not 1721, and who died in 1792. The reunion founders beginning in 1906 were so much concerned with Casper the immigrant that they completely ignored the fact that he arrived in 1743 with his brother-in-law, Henry Walter; that several years later the two took up adjoining land along the Codorus creek; and that Casper’s nephew, John Hildebrand, became their neighbor about the same time.
No one has ever found any evidence that any of these close relatives were buried on their farms, but there are tombstones in the Bupp’s Union graveyard for Henry Walter (died 1781), John Hildebrand (died 1783) and his wife Barbara (died 1794). There are also tombstones here for at least three of Casper’s grandchildren, one of whom, Philip (died 1825) and later his wife Anna Marie (died 1878) owned the homestead from 1815 until 1878.
Since weight of the available evidence pointed to Bupp’s Union as the place of Casper’s burial, the directors voted at the 1953 reunion to place a monument in this graveyard in memory of Casper and his wives, Elizabeth and Anna Mary. Thanks to the generosity of Director Clark W. Gladfelter, a monument dealer, the cost of the stone was $300.
This monument was dedicated on August 15, 1954.
This document is a transcription of The Bupp's Union Monument which was scanned from Dr. Charles H. Glatfelter's typed document.