CYRUS GRIEST BURIAL SITE AT MENALLEN FRIENDS
Historic Site — 1107 Carlisle Road, Biglerville, Adams County, Pennsylvania
Status: Operating · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/cyrus-griest-burial-site-at-menallen-friends-pennsylvania/

NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.

A historic site in Biglerville, Pennsylvania, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Cyrus Griest Burial Site at Menallen Friends is filed here for what the record attaches to it. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. HauntHunt files it with dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 3 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.

The knock came at the bedroom window, never the door. In the 1930s, Alexander Griest told an interviewer what the family remembered of the Springdale farm above Quaker Valley: Edward Mathews — a Black landholder from Yellow Hill, nine miles north of Gettysburg — would guide freedom seekers over the hill in the dark, stow them in Cyrus Griest's springhouse, and tap the window to say there were guests. In the morning the women carried breakfast down. It happened about twice a month, every summer, and never in winter, when frost would have written the path in the ground for anyone to read.

THE QUAKER VALLEY
Griest was a Menallen Friend, and the Menallen Quakers — meeting in the valley since 1780 — cited Deuteronomy for the work: the verse that forbids returning an escaped servant to his master. The law disagreed; harboring a fugitive was a federal offense worth jail and a thousand-dollar fine. The farm ran openly as Springdale Nurseries, an orchard business whose card survives in the meeting's records, while the springhouse did the double duty the file records — fugitives hidden below, and above them a one-room school where Griest's daughter Maria Edith taught.
From Springdale the line ran on to William and Phebe Wright at York Springs. Cyrus and Mary Ann Griest rest together in the Menallen burying ground — the file's entry is a Quaker's gravestone on the hill above a valley that broke federal law on a scripture verse.

HISTORY — 3 documented facts
· NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The record appears in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.
· Cyrus Griest Burial Site at Menallen Friends is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' documents the entry. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.
· Griest’s work is documented. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.

SOURCES — 3 cited
· Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01 — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223
· NPS Network to Freedom listing — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm
· Underground Railroad — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

—
HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/