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."

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Sharing this story published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on August 17, 2025. Mr. Paul LaRue of Washington Court House and his long time work ordering veterans grave markers is featured in this story.

 

"U.S. MILITARY"

"New headstones honor forgotten Americans who did their duty"

"The VA says a growing number of history buffs, Boy Scout troops and others are making sure long-dead warriors aren’t forgotten."

“Being a veteran, I wanted to do what I could to be sure all veterans get the recognition they deserve,” says Lyle Garitty, an administrator and historian at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore who scours records.
Photos by Jim Burger via Washington Post

The roots of John Knox’s despondence are lost to history. But his suicide made the newspaper: In 1895, he tied one end of a rope around his neck and the other around a stone block. Then he threw himself into Baltimore’s harbor.

A document in Knox’s pocket identified him as an army pensioner but included no next of kin, according to a brief account in the Baltimore Sun. He was sent to a pauper’s grave and forgotten for more than 120 years.

Then two workers at the city’s Green Mount Cemetery came across his story and applied for a grave marker through a little-known law passed in 1879. It requires the federal government to ship a headstone anywhere in the world for anyone who served in the U.S. military, not just those who died in combat or buried in military cemeteries.

The result is a granite plaque on a leafy hillside of the historic graveyard. It reads, in part: “Sgt. John W. Knox, Medal of Honor.”

It’s one of more than 167 such markers, tombstones and medallions that the cemetery workers Shawn Ward and Lyle Garitty have installed in the graveyard to memorialize forgotten men and women who did their duty in conflicts as far back as the Revolutionary War.

They are among the most active of what the Department of Veterans Affairs says is a growing number of history buffs, Boy Scout troops and others who have taken up the cause of long-dead warriors.

Pupils at a high school in Ohio installed more than 70 headstones in historic cemeteries near their school.

An Orlando resident secured 61 headstones for veterans of the Spanish-American War and other conflicts at Mount Peace Cemetery in St. Cloud, Florida.

Last year, VA’s National Cemetery Administration shipped 112,459 headstones, plaques and other “memorial products” to private graveyards, said Eric Powell, director of Memorial Products Service for the NCA. The government doesn’t keep track of how many are for historic graves, but most are for recent deaths.

Many of the memorial products center on Black graveyards. The government granted white veterans the right to a free headstone shortly after the Civil War, but the privilege wasn’t extended to Black soldiers until President Harry S. Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948.

That was too late for many of the veterans buried at Lebanon Cemetery, a Black graveyard opened in 1872 in York, Pennsylvania. A local group, the Friends of Lebanon Cemetery, has installed 17 government-issued headstones on graves that never had one or were marked with wooden ones that had rotted away, said Samantha Dorm, a volunteer with the group.

Record-keeping for African American soldiers was “an afterthought” for much of history, she says. That made it difficult to procure the necessary documentation to satisfy VA. It wasn’t until 1977 that the government declared women who served in units such as the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs in World War II, to be veterans.

HOW TO REQUEST A GRAVE MARKER

To get a grave marker, an applicant must provide documentation of a veteran’s honorable discharge of service in the federal armed services and certify that his or her grave is unmarked or marked with a badly deteriorated headstone.

In some cases, VA will even provide a plaque or marker — though not a tombstone — if it can be proved that the body has gone missing. That’s how Ward and Garitty were able to procure a marker for Knox, whom they believe is buried under a road.

The stones come in granite or marble and weigh more than 200 pounds. They are shipped free, but applicants must pay for the installation if it’s in a private cemetery.

Paul LaRue found a ready supply of volunteers while he was a social studies teacher at Washington High School in the rural hamlet of Washington Court House, Ohio. He was leading a field trip to a cemetery when a student asked about the poor condition of headstones over some soldiers’ graves. After a bit of research, he learned about VA’s headstone program and launched a project to have students research the buried veterans, order and then install markers. They put up about 70 of them between 2002 and 2012 in six graveyards around southern Ohio.

“It was really a great way to connect the students to the community and their history,” said LaRue, who retired from teaching and is now president of the Ohio State Board of Education.

SCOURING THE ARCHIVES

In the six years they’ve been at it, Baltimore’s Ward and Garitty have become a two-man honor guard, putting up markers and helping like-minded enthusiasts from Pennsylvania to western Maryland.

Ward and Garitty, veterans themselves, have scoured military archives, city death records and handwritten ledgers in the cemetery’s office. They’ve found soldiers, sailors and aviators whose graves were never marked or whose tombstones were lost or damaged. Their freshly carved, white stone slabs and polished bronze markers stand out amid the weathered monuments of Green Mount. They form a sort of granite Facebook of American history.

There’s one for Pvt. David Mumma, who served in a battalion of ethnic Germans from Maryland and Pennsylvania who fought under George Washington at the Battle of Trenton. Another marks the grave of Aquila Randall, a Maryland militiaman killed in the 1814 British invasion of Baltimore that inspired the national anthem. Fighter pilot Richard Seth, a standout lacrosse player at the U.S. Naval Academy, was lost at sea during the Korean War.

“Being a veteran, I wanted to do what I could to be sure all veterans get the recognition they deserve,” said Garitty, an administrator and historian at Green Mount."

Monday, August 11, 2025

The Pickaway County W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps have been added to the right sidebar of the blog.

 The Pickaway County W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps have been added to the right sidebar of the blog. 

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The W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps for Pickaway County contain the following townships.:
Circleville, Darby, Deer Creek
Harrison, Jackson, Madison
Monroe, Muhlenberg, Perry
Pickaway, Salt Creek, Scioto
Walnut, Washington, Wayne
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Pickaway County is primarily a rural county. 

It was perhaps even more so when these maps were drawn up during the decade of the 1930s; during the years of the Great Depression when the W.P.A. program was in place.

On the Cemetery Index Page, there are 57 cemeteries listed with the word "Farm" in their names.
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Circleville is the county seat of Pickaway County.
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These W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps have been recently placed on the Pickaway County Recorder's website in .pdf format.

Sharing from the Pickaway County Recorder.:
"If you go to our recording website, you can view the document by searching the following information:

O R vol 814 pg 5083
Instrument #:  202400007429

You can also search by cemetery names."
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Pickaway County contains several American Revolutionary War veteran burials.:

Above is a photograph posted here with permission from the photographer of the large gray granite memorial monument for Revolutionary War veterans who were buried in Pickaway County but whose exact location is unknown.  

This monument is at Forest Cemetery in Circleville.  

Capt. Eleazer Williamson is included on the list.  

On Find a Grave he is shown as buried at the Presbyterian Cemetery which is Page number 62 on the Cemetery Index.

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There are some map pages where veterans names are listed and their gravesite location shown; however, their war number -- example: the number "1" designation for the American Revolutionary War, is missing.
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Note: that the Yankeetown Cemetery is listed on Find a Grave as being in Fayette County. 

However, in the Pickaway County collection of W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps, Yankeetown Cemetery is shown as being in Monroe Township, Pickaway County which is next to the border with Fayette County.:  

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Note also that the Methodist Cemetery on the Cemetery Index as number Page 82 is named as the Beckett Cemetery on Find a Grave.
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Pickaway County's W.P.A. Cemetery Plat Maps are a fascinating collection containing several pages of smaller family cemeteries that in some instances have now disappeared.  Because of the W.P.A. workers' documentation of their location and veteran burial information, the existence of these early burial grounds is proven and their records have been preserved for our further research.
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Tuesday, August 5, 2025

"Friends of the Cemetery" - Medina's Spring Grove Cemetery Annual Meeting presents Mr. Paul LaRue as its featured speaker - Sunday, September 7, 2025 - 2:00p.m. at Spring Grove Cemetery , Medina - Grove Street Entrance - The public is invited to attend.

 

Friends of the Cemetery - Facebook Page

"The Friends of the Cemetery Annual Members’ Meeting will be held at the Spring Grove Chapel on Sunday, September 7 at 2:00 p.m."

"We are pleased and honored to welcome Mr. Paul LaRue, a retired social studies teacher from Washington Court House City Schools, as our guest speaker. He has received numerous state and national teaching awards, including the Ohio DAR American History Teacher of the Year, the American Legion Ohio Educator of the Year, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Ohio Teacher of the Year, the History Channel’s First Place in Innovation in History Education, Time Warner’s National Teacher Award, and the African American Civil War Memorial Teacher of the Year. Paul served on the Ohio Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee and the Ohio World War 1 Centennial Committee. Currently, Paul serves as co-chair of the America 250-Ohio K-12 Education Committee and is President of the State of Ohio Board of Education.

Paul will talk to us about the significance of preserving historic cemeteries, the importance of recounting our connection to the Underground Railroad, and ways to educate our children about both. He will also discuss how we can engage our community in the America 250 commemoration and the necessity of teaching our children about it.

Be sure to note this significant and timely meeting on your calendar, as it is one you will not want to miss!"

Google Map showing location of the Spring Grove Cemetery in Medina.

Reminder:

This is a public meeting and those who are interested are invited to attend.