Early History
In 1870, a Jewish burial society was formed in Fort Scott and in the summer of that year, the cemetery was consecrated.
The oldest marked graves are those of Marx Horn and Mark Samuels, business partners from Baxter Springs who both died on September 30, 1870.
The location of their graves was labeled on the cemetery map, but the graves themselves remained unmarked until Ann Gillmore-Hoffman, who lived in Fort Scott at the time, did the research and paperwork necessary to have a government headstone placed at the grave of Marx Horn. Horn had been a Confederate soldier in Arkansas during the Civil War. An error was made on Horn’s stone, so a new stone was ordered and delivered. The first stone was re-cut by a local monument shop and placed at Samuel’s grave.
It appears that there may be an unmarked grave next to Horn’s and we suspect it was the very first burial.
Obituaries of prominent Jewish citizens printed in the two locals papers during the late 1800s often mention funerals behing held in private homes and burial rites being conducted by rabbis from Kansas City in what the newspapers refer to as the “Hebrew burial ground.”
A Regional Cemetery
Of the people interred in the 180 marked graves in Pine Lawn, many of them never resided in Fort Scott. They lived in other Southeast Kansas communities which did not have Jewish cemeteries: Baxter Springs, Columbus, Galena, Pittsburg, Pleasanton, etc.
End of an Era
By the mid-20th century, only a few Jews remained in Fort Scott. The stewardship of Pine Lawn had passed to the generation who had moved away from Fort Scott, and by the 1960s it was clear that it was not practical to manage and maintain a cemetery from a distance. In 1967 the Jewish Burial Society transfered ownership of Pine Lawn to the Fort Scott Cemetery Association, the owners of Evergreen, the non-denominational cemetery located southwest of Pine Lawn.
Today
Pine Lawn continues to be owned by the Fort Scott Cemetery Association and maintained with the same degree of care and respect given to their other cemeteries.
The cemetery is still “active,” though there have been no burials there in the past 15 or 20 years. The descendants of any of the families interred in Pine Lawn may choose to be buried there without charge for the burial space.
