According to Beers, 1883 History of Union County, Ohio, part 5, page 432, "The first burial-place in Leesburg Township, was on Joseph Brannon's farm, half a mile east of Pharisburg. Quite a number of early settlers were buried here, among them Alexander Elliott. The place is no long used as a public graveyard. Before it was set apart for this purpose, the Decker graveyard, in Delaware County, was used."

One hundred two years after the 1883 history was written a group of ladies from the then recently formed Union County Genealogical Society managed to locate what was left of the graveyard. They reported that no stones were still standing but they recorded the inscriptions on those that they found. On September 12, 2010 we received permission from the property owner to visit the cemetery. As you can see by the photograph above, the cemetery has been nearly swallowed up by native plants and trees. But, if you look hard enough you can see a few stones leaning agains trees. We photographed all the stones that we found and we also photographed footstones, broken pieces, and any visible foundations. Unfortunately, we did not find all of the stones that were visible in 1985. Some names and dates will be found inside brackets ( [ ] ); those were taken from the 1985 readings. Items underlined in black are the Webmaster's "best guess."

The cemetery is located on private property on the north side of State Route 347 just a little east of Whitestone Road. It is in a stand of trees and cannot be seen from the road.

GPS Coordinates:
DEC - Latitude = 40.345094 Longitude = -83.294369
DMS - Latitude = 402042N Longitude = 0831739W

Gravestones:

(Click on the underlined name to view the gravestone photograph)

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Gustafson - Wichmann Ancestry

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