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The Rootstown Old Cemetery (sometimes “Ye Olde Cemetery”) began as a two-acre parcel set aside on the Abram and Siley Reed Farm for use as a burying ground. County histories record that Nathan Chapman Sr. (1759-1809) was the first burial. Although the Reeds dedicated their parcel as a community cemetery in 1816, it was not until 1861 that Reed Family heirs sold the plot to Rootstown Township for the sum of $1. Old Cemetery remained an active burial ground for more than a century; farmer Frank Seymour (1861-1942) was the last burial. Cemetery researchers recorded three hundred and ninety-eight burials in Old Cemetery; one hundred and twenty-six of those graves were unmarked. The Rootstown cemetery is the final resting place for veterans of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.
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The village of Perrysburg was founded in 1816 and Wood County in 1820. In 1822 the town established a village cemetery and located it on the southwest corner of West Indiana at Cherry Streets. By 1848 it was full and a new one was created on West Boundary and Indiana Avenue. The first burial was that of William Cassady in 1849. The cholera epidemic of 1854 that caused over one hundred deaths, overloaded the small cemetery workforce. Potters Field was designed in 1868 on the NW corner of Block Two. In 1877 Perrysburg Township bought adjacent land in sections K and L and joined forces to create Fort Meigs Union Cemetery. There are nine underground vaults in the side of the terrace by the old Ewing Creek stream bed adjacent to the 1912 mausoleum.
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Granville, Ohio, was settled in 1805 by the Licking Company, a group formed in Granville, Massachusetts, and Granby, Connecticut, for the purpose of emigrating west. The Old Colony Burying Ground was defined on the first town plat of Granville in 1805. Many of Granville’s pioneers are interred within this ground, and the cemetery retains its original form and most of its westward facing rows of sandstone and marble gravestones. The early settlers buried here helped to lay out this town and determined the appearance and development of the village as it is today. The first burial, the infant son of Ethan Bancroft, was in April 1806. The oldest extant gravestone is dated 1808. Eighteen veterans of the Revolutionary War, thirty-nine from the War of 1812, and sixteen Civil War veterans rest here along with ministers, farmers, industrialists, physicians, young mothers, children, and other citizens of Granville.
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Field Musician Richard W. Thompson. Tunes played on fife and drum regulated a soldier’s life in camp and his actions on the battlefield. Heard over the roar of battle and through the haze of smoke, fifes and drums – field music – communicated orders to massed troops quickly. Richard Willoughby Thompson (c. 1742-1837), buried in Fancher Cemetery, was a field musician during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. According to his grandson Henry’s recollections from the 1920s, Thompson was born in Dublin, Ireland, and enlisted in the British army, where his service culminated in his capture while picking blackberries. He switched allegiances, joined the colonials, and was sent to Virginia. Thompson was appointed the Fife Major of the 5th Virginia Regiment and remained a Fife Major as Virginia units organized during the war. (Continued on other side)
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There are 48 known members of the Postle family buried in the cemetery. Their stories are interwoven with the history of Prairie Township, Franklin County, and Ohio. In 1810, Shadrach and Anna Stacia Postle were among the first settlers of Prairie Township. Their son Job was a veteran of the War of 1812 and later owned the Checker Inn, a popular stopping place on the National Road. In the 1860s, Smith Postle and his son, William Sylvester Postle, were some of the first manufacturers of clay drainage tile in Ohio. Their products improved drainage in farm fields and fostered the growth of the tile industry in the state. Gabriel Postle was the first Postle buried in the cemetery in 1829. Twelve graves are of children under the age of six, which testifies to the hardships endured by the area’s early residents. Other graves include those of John Whitehurst, a freed slave who lived with the family of the Job Postle and John Tracy, a veteran of the Civil War. In 1870, Nancy Postle was the last person buried in the cemetery.
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Using the power of eminent domain, the United States Government purchased 9,000 acres of land in Perkins Township, Erie County, Ohio to build the Plum Brook Ordnance Plant in 1941, displacing many families and businesses. This tract included the original Perkins cemetery, the resting-place for many of the township’s founding families who settled here in 1809 and victims of the numerous cholera epidemics of the early to mid-1800s. Though many of the earliest graves could not be located, most were re-interred here as part of the war effort on the home front during World War II.
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King Solomon “Sol” White was born in Bellaire on June 12, 1868. A Baseball legend, he was an all-around player, manager, and organizer in the Pre-Negro Leagues (1887-1912) and the Negro Leagues (1920-1926). White first played with integrated baseball clubs the Bellaire Globes (1884-1886) and Wheeling Green Stockings (1887). After 1887-1888 color barriers were imposed on baseball, White played on segregated minor league teams. They included: the Pittsburgh Keystones, Cuban Giants, York Colored Monarchs, Cuban X-Giants, Page Fence Giants, and Chicago Columbia Giants. As a coach, he helped organize and lead the powerhouse Philadelphia Giants to their 1904-1907 championships. White died on August 26, 1955, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Staten Island’s Frederick Douglas Memorial Cemetery. In 2006, “Sol” White was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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Shortly after Oberlin Colony was established in 1833, a two-acre burying ground was set aside south of Plum Creek in the area bounded by Main, Morgan, and Professor streets. By 1861, however, with the town and Oberlin College growing and the Civil War escalating, the need for a larger cemetery became clear. After an extensive search, 27.5 acres of land belonging to Henry Safford were acquired one mile west of the center of Oberlin. H.B. Allen was hired to create a design in the style of the Rural Cemetery Movement, and in July 1864 Westwood Cemetery was formally dedicated. Burials in Westwood had actually begun in August 1863, and over the next few years hundreds of remains were reinterred from Oberlin’s “Old Cemetery” and from burying grounds in surrounding communities. In the mid-1860s the cemetery was enlarged to its present 47 acres, and in 2004 burials and memorials were estimated to number almost ten thousand. (Continued on other side)