The Columbus City Graveyards
Page Design © 2008 by David K. Gustafson
Content © 1985 by Donald M. Schlegel

Used with permission
(original on file)


History of the North Graveyard

5, 1860, according to the city's annual report. No other reference has been found to indicate how the money was spent. Annual reports for the following two years show expenditures of $94.32 and $35.50, probably for fence repairs, but then no expenditures for the next two years, ending in April of 1864.

 THE GREENLAWN OFFER

The North Graveyard and surrounding areas were annexed to the city in 1862, increasing expectations for accelerated growth in the area and increasing the general desire to see the graveyard closed or removed.

Removals were expedited by an offer made by the Green Lawn Cemetery Association on February 29, 1864. The Association's trustees proposed to the owners of graveyard lots to exchange Green Lawn lots for the lots owned in the old graveyard, to exhume and decently reinter the remains in the new lots, and when enough lots had been accumulated to lay off the North Graveyard into town lots which would be leased to provide income for the support and improvement of Green Lawn Cemetery.42 The lots could not be sold outright, because the lot owners only held them of the city "for a burying place," but the trustees must have thought that the agreements, providing for support of a burial place, would be valid and legal contracts. The agreement whereby the lot owners signed their rights over to Green Lawn read:

We, the undersigned lot-owners in the North Graveyard of the City of Columbus, do hereby give and grant to the Green Lawn Cemetery Association of Columbus, Ohio, all our right, title and interest, legal and equitable, in and to said lots and all rights as such lot-owners; and we further direct and empower the city of Columbus as the holder of the legal title to said graveyard to convey to said Green Lawn Cemetery Association the fee simple of said graveyard, on condition that said Cemetery Association remove the bodies therein, and the monuments erected thereon, to Green Lawn Cemetery, and there inter the same in lots of equal area and erect the monuments thereon, and use the said graveyard for raising a permanent fund for the support and improvement of said Green Lawn Cemetery in such manner as is best, under the direction of the Trustees of said Cemetery Association, never, however, to be alienated in fee.43

One of the first lots offered to Green Lawn was the one reserved by William and Eliza Doherty when they sold their tract to the city in 1830. This lot was, of course, owned in fee simple and was conveyed to Greenlawn Cemetery by a deed dated March, 1864 and signed by Eliza Doherty, widow, William S. and Sarah Miner, James M. and Maria Doherty, Francis T. and Anna Doherty, Leonard and Mary E. Whitney,


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