Hidden from passers-by on Mahoning Drive West in Mahoning Township and nestled between residences is a unique, unambiguous cemetery.

It is seldom used these days, but still important to its owner whose family owned the graveyard for generations dating back to the late 18th Century.

The Zimmerman Cemetery, also known as Alder Zimmerman-Graabhof in Pennsylvania Dutch lingo and less than a mile from the Broney’s Corner intersection with Mill Road, is owned by Robert L. Lusch of Bristol, a descendant of the well-known Lusch family of the Lehighton area.

The cemetery “had fallen into disrepair over the decades since my grandfather (Charles N. Lusch) was buried there, and I am still working to fix it up,” said Lusch, who works as a special-education teacher for the Bucks County Intermediate Unit.

The late Charles Lusch and his wife, Loretta (Gaumer) Lusch, owned Lusch Motor Parts, a successful business in Lehighton. It was Charles’ wish to be buried in the cemetery he owned. He was the last to be interred at the site.

His grandson said, “After his 1989 passing, no one was able to find the deed or a will that covered what to do with the property.”

Eventually, Lusch said, the property fell out of the family’s control, as the person who purchased the land at a Carbon County Tax Claim Bureau tax sale was unrelated to the family “and purchased for ignoble reasons,” he said.

When the owner died, Robert Lusch said, “His family would not help me to recover the property bv providing me with a death certificate.”

Lusch said in 2011 he began to pay the taxes on the property in order to keep it from going up for sale again while he continued to pursue the former owner’s death certificate. Finally, in 2015, he left the property go up for tax sale, and, with the help of his father, Charles J. Lusch, now a resident of Berks County, was able to recover the property.

Having sat unattended-to since that time, the graveyard needs work, yet while finances offer the new owner somewhat of a barrier, his plans are to “fix it up.”

He said, “I’d like to get the old stones, which are eroded and worn, redone.”

Then, too, he said, the ground is “soft land, with sinkholes,” that are concerning, “But, it can be beautiful.”

Lusch said he and his congregation recently got help a professional grant writer to find funding for the restoration of gravestones and for other upgrades to the site. In the future, Lusch said, he will donate the land to his church “so that the site will have more significance to more people in the generations to come.”

A minister of Urglaawe, the pursuit of heathenry through the lens of the Pennsylvania German culture, Lusch has other visions in the cemetery rehabilitation project, like exploring burial methods that would be environmentally friendly.

“I’d like to see the cemetery grounds be for religious practice,” he said. “Maybe some day we could build a temple there as a modern expression of the ancient Germanic religion through the lens of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture.”

He is insistent upon advancing the Pennsylvania Dutch culture, saying, “I’d like to provide a place for education for the Pennsylvania Dutch culture. We (Dutch descendants) had contributions and interactions with our neighbors that were pivotal pieces of history.”

The cemetery is just east of the former Gnadenhuetten Inn, a property owned now by Jeffrey Mann, who assists Lusch from time to time with maintaining the land (grass cutting.)

“I have the best neighbors you can ask for,” said Mann, who said people stop there from time to time, obviously intrigued to find

a cemetery in an inconspicuous location.