New Pennsylvania Cemetery

A county history of 1900 shows what one Rishel made of this country. M. Y. Rishel, born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, in 1841, worked as a carpenter in Omaha in 1865 and began farming in Sarpy County the next year. In 1868 he leased the 80 acres he lived on, buying them in 1890, and set out cottonwoods that measured three feet across by 1900. He grew pears and peaches where many had failed. The sketch recalls deer and antelope on the prairie then, streams full of fish since dried up, and daily visits from Indians.

What the plaque says

New Pennsylvania Cemetery The Rishel family came from Pennsylvania to Sarpy County in May 1865. The locality where they settled became known as Peach Grove after a nearby post office by that name. The cemetery was established August 30, 1875, when Mary Jane Rishel Long deeded land already used as a family burial ground. Sarah Rishel was the first known burial in 1868. Frank Leslie Rishel was the last known burial in 1935. The cemetery name recalls the former residence of many interred here. Placed by Rishel Family Descendants Nebraska State Historical Society, 2010

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 11 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 16 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 17 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 17 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Springfield Community Hall — 6.9 mi
• Oto Indians — 8.4 mi
• Lincoln Highway at Elkhorn — 8.5 mi
• Father Flanagan's Boys' Home — 9.1 mi