Cemeteries are silent sentinels of history, many of which gaze out upon busy intersections where horses once trod, that continue to harbor the stories and secrets of lives well spent and others cut short in youth.

In Groveport, at the turn of the 20th century, 23 cemeteries existed in and around the village. Some continue to be lovingly maintained, while others are sandstone and marble derelicts overgrown by weeds and time.

On the corner of State Route 256 and Blacklick-Eastern Road in Pickerington, on a hill overlooking the congested thoroughfare, the Pisgah Cemetery experienced its last burial around 1947. Yet across town, next to land laid out by Abraham Pickering in 1815, the deceased continue to be interred in the Pickerington Cemetery.

At the side of Gender Road, not far from acres of newly developed residential housing, the Mennonite Cemetery maintained by Madison Township is yet another footnote in the history of southeastern Franklin County.

A quick search of the names found within the iron-fenced walls of local burying grounds yields an abundance of familiar faces on street signs and roadways of today including Richardson, Rohr, and Rarey. While their headstones fade with the passing years, their names live on in the addresses of the businesses and the homes in the area.

Groveport Cemetery

Groveport Village Councilman and retired teacher Ed Rarey, who is also an active member of the village's historical society and cemetery board, can trace his ancestry back to the founding of the village.

"There are some very notable people buried in the (Groveport) cemetery," reported Rarey. "The most famous being John Rarey, known as the 'Horse Whisperer,' and his family. The oldest known inscription is Catherine G. Her gravestone is in the shape of an old casket. It says she was the consort of John C. Richardson, M.D. and the daughter of Captain Isaac Bowman, all natives of Shenandoah County, Virginia."

In addition to the carving, including a poem calling Catherine a "fairest flower, thy failing breath is gone", the grave marker lists her birth on Dec. 23, 1787 and passing on Jan. 19, 1809. Rarey said the stone is losing its clarity and he would like to see it preserved in some way.

The Groveport Cemetery, which was once under the control of Madison Township, before being annexed to the village within the last decade, contains the remains of the forefathers and mothers of the community. However, one grave, moved to the site when the federal government created Lockbourne Air Force Base, has an undocumented famous foreign connection.

"In 1943, the Huddle graveyard was moved from land owned by Wesley Huddle to make way for the military base. Paul Raver, who recently passed away, over saw the project," stated Rarey. "The graves dated from the mid-1800s, and it's not verified, but rumored the Napoleon Bonaparte's drummer boy was buried in the Huddle cemetery."

While folklore and urban legends of haunted homes, school buildings, and a town hall abound; including stories surrounding the Watkins Road Bridge in Madison Township where restless ghosts of a woman killed in a car accident, a mother looking for an infant drowned in the waters of Alum Creek, or a boy killed not long after carving his girlfriend's initials into a covered bridge reportedly roam the bridge; no stories were linked with local cemeteries and supernatural apparitions.

Rarey said he does remember tales he heard from his grandmother of the burials of the victims of a cholera epidemic. He was told the ceremonies took place in the evening by candlelight. There is also a section of the cemetery that houses the graves of Irish Catholic workers who died while working on the Ohio and Erie Canal in Groveport. Little information is available on the immigrants because their tombstones were carved out of sandstone and greatly deteriorated over time.

Although Rarey said the township did a good job of maintaining the cemetery, he credits the support of the village from bringing it back to the condition it was when it was first established, including removal of a chain link fence that replaced one originally constructed out of iron. The five-year renovation project includes installation of a lettered archway and period fencing surrounding the burial grounds.

Pisgah, Dovel & Pickerington cemeteries

In Fairfield County, the Pickeringon city cemetery combines a parcel of land, designated by Pickering to be set aside as a community graveyard and known as Dovel Cemetery, with land purchased and plotted in 1884 and an additional seven acres added in 1925. Pickerington Historical Society member Gene Houser said the lots in the 1800s sold for $10.

"One confederate soldier, who was a farm laborer in the area, is buried there," reported Houser. "He went out to bring the cows in for milking and was crossing a creek that goes through the area. The cows made it across, but he was found downstream, drowned by a flash flood."

Perched atop a grassy hill once overlooking pastoral expanses of fields and forest, the view from the knoll occupied by the Pisgah Cemetery is quite different now.

Hemmed in on three sides by asphalt ribbons and commercial development, the only semblance of peace for the Pisgah deceased comes from the church across the parking lot.

Car fumes and the cacophony of life hallmarking the 21st century are far cries from the reverant and quiet world that once surrounded the cemetery containing the remains of many founding families of the area.

Mennonite Cemetery

Many smaller cemeteries have not fared as well as their larger brethren and lay forgotten on a hillside, in a farm field, or aside a stretch of a busy road such as the Mennonite cemetery along Gender Road.

Little is known of the small graveyard. The first burial on the grounds, as recorded in George Bareis' book "History of Madison Township: Canal Winchester and Groveport, Ohio" was for Adda Hoffman and took place in 1845 when she was 42-years-old. The headstone was inscribed in German. Five years later, in 1850, a wooden church was built nearby, but was removed in 1898.

There are a number of graves listed in Bareis' book, which was published in the early 1900's, yet few headstones remain. A Madison Township Eagle Scout candidate is refurbishing the cemetery as a community service project.

"How sad the feeling, when one visits one of the old burying grounds to see time doing its inevitable work of destruction and decay," wrote Bareis. "Only a few more years and every tombstone that marks the last resting place of the pioneer will be gone; and with these sandstone and marble slabs will disappear even the name of these sturdy and simple-lived people, for even now no living person can tell the tone of their silent voice or their form or feature, or the expression of their eye or face."

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