Side A: The first Mt. Tabor Church, a log meetinghouse, was erected on this site in 1816. It stood on land originally selected by Griffith and Martha Evans for a graveyard at the death of their daughter circa 1812. Deeds show the Evans family gave two and one half acres of land “for the purpose of erecting a meetinghouse and establishing a burying site.” Camp meetings, religious gatherings popular in frontier Ohio, were held on the hillside west of the meetinghouse. Simon Kenton was converted at a Mt. Tabor camp meeting in 1819. The log meetinghouse burned in 1824 and was replaced with a brick church on the same spot. In 1881, the present brick church was completed and dedicated.
Side B: The cemetery at Mt. Tabor basically surrounds the church on three sides. Although the date of death of Griffith and Martha Evans’s small daughter varies according to county histories, it indisputably was the first burial in what was to become Mt. Tabor Cemetery. Veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II are interred in the cemetery. Harley Woodard, a local stone carver, furnished many of the gravestones. The cemetery is renowned for its three cast zinc monuments. Far more uncommon than the usual stone monuments, these hollow grave markers, with their distinctive bright gray color, were produced only briefly during the 1880s and 1890s.
Sponsors: Champaign County Bicentennial Historical Marker Committee, Salem Township Trustees, Descendents of Marshall and Dorothy Connolly Evans Family, and The Ohio Historical Society
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