With well over 1000 persons interred at Pine Grove cemetery, it is our largest cemetery. Located on a hilltop above the Wallenpaupack Creek in South Sterling, the land was originally part of the Hugh and Emily Lancaster farm bordering Route 191 and Pine Grove Road. The headstones date from the late 1860s, and many of the early settlers from the villages of South Sterling, LaAnna and Panther are buried on the knoll in the oldest part of the cemetery. Among them are Mahlon Dreher, great-nephew of Judge Samuel Dreher, for whom Dreher Township is named; and Nathan and LaAnna Houck, founders of LaAnna, as well as several of their children and grandchildren. On the creek side of the knoll, land was set aside for a “donation section.” Small stones mark the graves of those who could not afford to purchase an engraved headstone. During the Great Depression, several itinerant workers who lost their lives riding the rails near Gouldsboro and Tobyhanna were accepted for burial and placed in unmarked graves on the steep hillside.
When the Pine Grove Cemetery Association was chartered on January 3, 1881, the group purchased three acres of land from Hugh and Emily Lancaster for $150. An additional burial ground was added in the 1970s adjacent to the knoll, and another section was opened in the 1980s. The cemetery is managed today by the Pine Grove Cemetery Association.