Exploring Almost Forgotten Gravesites in the Great State of Ohio

Dedicated to cemetery preservation in the great state of Ohio


"A cemetery may be considered as abandoned when all or practically all of the bodies have been Removed therefrom and no bodies have been buried therein for a great many years, and the cemetery has been so long neglected as entirely to lose its identity as such, and is no longer known, recognized and respected by the public as a cemetery. 1953 OAG 2978."

Monday, November 12, 2018

"Epitaph" - "Forbidden Twin" - Henry Clay Cooper - 1858 - 1913

Sharing from Eli Allen, President of the Scioto County Genealogical Society.:

"We think of cemeteries being conveniently located open spaces. Places where passers-by would contemplate their mortality and family members would commune with those gone before, but the places and how we travel has changed much in the last century. 

Folks once navigated the ridge lines instead of the valley floors, and there they buried their dead. 

Shawnee State Forest has many of these burial grounds. Here they were placed not because it was unfarmable waste ground because hillsides and tops were farmed as well, but because the ridges were free of flooding and were the highways of their time. 

Here is the Clay Henry Cooper burial ground, high above the valley in Shawnee State Forest."