As Bowling Green celebrates its 200th birthday, re-enactors will bring the dead in Pioneer Cemetery briefly back to life in time for the festivities.

Prior to and during the Civil War in Bowling Green, as in other places south of the Mason-Dixon Line in America, cemeteries were social gathering places. Cemeteries were usually next to churches, and since it might take an hour just to get to church from six miles out of town, once people got there on a Sunday, they wanted to socialize with their friends and neighbors.

Pioneer Cemetery was no exception, with the First Presbyterian Church constructed in the south corner of the graveyard. The crypt-type headstones were used as tables as families gathered in the cemetery for lunch after church. The church moved to its current site prior to 1840, according to local records.

Pioneer Cemetery will once again be a social gathering place Thursday and next month as 10 voices from the past chat with visitors during the Pioneer Cemetery Lantern Tour. The cost is $10 for adults, and $5 for students and seniors over 60. It is free for kids under 12. The shows are at 7 p.m., 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Thursday. Participants should arrive 15 minutes before the tour start time, wear walking shoes and bring a flashlight.

“This is history without making it dry and boring,” organizer Sharon Tabor said. The Lantern Tour is a fundraiser for re-enactors who will descend on the city in April. The goal is to raise $2,000 to purchase gunpowder the re-enactors will use when they portray soldiers of the Union Army, Tabor said.

The Lantern Tour was pushed up to coincide with Bowling Green’s bicentennial this week, Tabor said.

Telling the tales will be (actor or actress in parentheses): Esther Jones (Beverly Segrist), Elizabeth Moore (Regina Newell), Phebe Hardcastle Rouscher (Rachel Daniel), Kitty Crawford (Linda Hill), Henry Underwood (Jerry Wallace in September and Bill Dow in October), U.S. Rep. Henry Grider (Jim Dale), Lt. Charles Davis (Logan Rhinerson), Pvt. Henry Colcamp (Daniel Curry), Patrick Donnovan (Joe Williams), and Dr. John Quincy Burnam (Bill Collins)

Jones was a wealthy landowner, Moore’s husband helped found Bowling Green, Rouscher is a pretty bride, Crawford a free black, Underwood a man in the shadow of his brothers, Grider an attorney, Davis a bookkeeper and soldier, Colcamp a German immigrant soldier, Donnovan an Irish railroad immigrant and Burnam a Confederate doctor.

The 10 are all former residents who lived in Bowling Green between 1796 and 1866, and their stories were researched, Tabor said.

There are additional performances scheduled Oct. 12 and Oct. 13, with all of the shows beginning around sunset.

“With the outbreak of the Civil War, railroad accidents and people dying of typhoid fever, whooping cough and other illnesses, the (Pioneer) Cemetery was almost to its capacity by 1861,” Tabor notes in an introductory script that will be part of the Lantern Tour.

“As you walk through the cemetery tonight, notice the different styles of headstones,” Tabor continues. “The more elaborate headstones were in later years as people became more prosperous and the industrial revolution provided machinery to cut the stones in more complicated designs. The earlier headstones were plain.”

Some highlights of the presentations include:

•Burnam: “Too many young men dying. I do what I can for them. The Confederacy ran low on medicine a long time ago. Battlefield surgery’s operated with no laudnuam, morphine or other pain killers, except maybe some whiskey … medical school didn’t train us for the battlefield.”

•Colcamp: “Vy am I in the Union Army? Lots of German immigrants joined the Union Army. Ve don’t like the division of the German states in the Old Country … the army gives a steady paycheck and ve vant to show our neighbors ve are goot citizens.”

•Crawford: “Lawdy, lawdy! You bringing me more washing? Guess not. I’ve got plenty of washin from the white folks, that’s for sure. It’s not easy being colored and free, but it’s a lot more respectable than belonging to somebody else.”

•Davis: “When Fort Sumter fell in 1861, the city went wild! Passions were high and men were joining up right and left. Men were afraid they would get left out of the action. Everybody figured we would take Virginia in six to eight weeks tops and the war would be over!”

•Grider: “Well, well, well! Welcome to our fair city! Did you come by steamboat or train? We’re right proud of the L&N railroad! Bowling Green is becoming quite a city! Less than 200 people when I arrived about 1810, but now we have over 2,000 residents from all over!”

•Donnovan: “Injured working as a railroad gandy-dancer, I was. Opened a saloon in Bowling Green. Not much respect for the Irish around here. But people don’t seem to mind an Irishman givin’ em drink an’cards, for sure.”

•Jones: “Mr. Jones died in ’27, just a few short years after our arrival. I moved in with daughter Catherine Cooke several years ago. We lost her husband in the influenza epidemic in ’56. People said two women couldn’t handle a farm, but we have done so quite successfully!”

•Moore: “I’ve seen a lot of changes in my lifetime. I was born during the Revolutionary War. My family left Pennsylvania for Virginia in the late 1790s. I married George Moore and we eventually came here to what was then called Lincoln County, Virginia. Over 800 miles across the mountains and rivers. Miserable traveling from Virginia!”

•Rauscher: “You don’t know what mercantile is? It’s a store. We sell all kinds of wonderful items for everyone! Nails, seeds, cigars, stoves. My favorite is the pretty fabric and hats for the ladies.”

•Underwood: “I don’t much care about the politics of this war either way. Just wish this mess would be over soon. I thought I’d try my luck on the river boats, but there aren’t many people traveling for pleasure these days.”

Pioneer Cemetery sits at Sixth Avenue and Center Street. Tickets will be sold at the gate on the night of the event. For more information on Thursday’s tour or the October dates, call 745-7317.