OLD PHILADELPHIA (KASTNER'S) CHURCH CEMETERY ROSTER

Kastner's Church Cemetery
The first Lutheran congregation located in what is today Gaston County was originally known as Kastner's Lutheran congregation. IN the absence of the church records, which ere destroyed in the flood of 1916, much information about the church and its cemetery comes from other sources and from oral tradition.  Adam Kastner, at the age of thirty-eight, along with his wife and five children sailed on the ship PATIENCE from Rotterdam, Holland, going via of England, and arrived in
America at York County, Pennsylvania in September, 1748. After remaining there for a while, Adam then moved his family to Piedmont, North Carolina. Tradition tells us that Adam, father of the Costner family in our area, held religious meetings in his home. It is assumed that a log church was constructed on the Kastner property some time later. A cemetery was begun at the same time. The first person buried in the cemetery (who has a marked stone) was Adam Kastner. His death in 1767 left the congregation without a spiritual leader since the earliest Lutheran minister did not come to North Carolina until the middle 1770's. Adam was buried on a hill near his home. With his death we trace the history of Kastner's Lutheran Church and Cemetery.  The early congregation was known as Kastners or Costners in the early records. As late as the 1820's the references are made to Costner's Church. However, by 1776 the congregation had the name changed to PHILADELPHIA, which has been used since that time.

This cemetery contains many markers since it served the congregation of Kastner's as the only burial ground until 1916, with only a few burials after that year. The oldest markers are soapstone slabs, shaped and inscribe by hand. The earliest deceased were children and relatives of the Kastners. Other families - Cloningers, Fridays, Garrisons, Linebergers, Hoyles, Pasours, Plonks, Rhynes, Rutledges, Thornburgs - are buried along side their friends and fellow church members. Even after a church was built very close to the South Fork River in 1798, the congregation continued to travel to their burying grounds on the hill overlooking the river and the church. Of course, not all the members of the church chose to bury in the cemetery. Some preferred their own family cemeteries which were closer to home and where other loved ones already rested. By 1916 a sizable cemetery covered the slope. Only because of a natural disaster - the flood which destroyed the church - did the congregation cease burying at the old cemetery.
Kastner's Church Cemetery embraces 149 years of history. The congregation experienced wars, economic depressions, epidemics of various diseases, and changes in the world surrounding them. Yet they remained faithful, and may allowed themselves to rest in the ground near Adam Kastner, whose desire for religious services resulted in the formation of Kastner's Lutheran Church and Cemetery.

(The Historical Committee of Philadelphia Lutheran Church is indeed grateful to Mrs. Harold Cloninger for the art work on the cover of this booklet and also to Robert C. Carpenter for the above history of Kastner's Church Cemetery).