filling up the swamp in the North Grave Yard, got into a fix yesterday by plunging off into the swampy mire of that locality. After considerable trouble and plunging, they again reached terra firma.

Additional filling to the amount of 334 loads of dirt was done by Patrick Kelly for a price of $40.08 in the year ending in the spring of 1871.

REMOVALS OF 1872

Though not remarked as such, the beginning of the end of the North Graveyard was signalled by the formation of the Union Depot Company in the spring of 1868. The tract of land across High street from the North Graveyard had been chosen as the site of the first railroad station in Columbus by the directors of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati and Columbus and Xenia railroads in 1848. The frame stationhouse, accomodating three tracks, was erected in 1850. In April and May of 1868 the Union Depot Company was formed by the successors of these two railroads with the intention of erecting a depot for the use of "all lines of railroad now or hereafter constructed, terminating at or passing through the city of Columbus." This site thus became the target of all new rail lines entering the city, which were beginning to proliferate in the late 1860's.

In order to gain access to this new depot, the Columbus, Springfield and Cincinnati Railroad filed suit in the Franklin County Probate Court on January 19, 1871 to appropriate the southern one hundred feet of the North Graveyard. The suit was filed against the city, as owner in fee of the property, and was quickly decided, with the result that the railroad placed $14,625 in the hands of the court for the property on January 26. Previous to the filing of this case, the Columbus, Chicago and Indiana Central Railway Company, assuming that the lot-owners had some legal right in fee to their lots, had been negotiating with them individually with the ultimate goal of acquiring the entire Doherty tract for the same purpose of access to the Union Depot.45This company also filed suit in the Probate Court in January, 1871, to appropriate the entire graveyard. This suit was later abandoned when the land was tied up by the suit in Common Pleas Court, as described below.

As a result of the actions of the railroad companies, two suits were filed in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. First, John M. Kerr, son of the grantor of the Kerr tract, filed a suit of ejectment against the City of Columbus, on the grounds that the city had abandoned it as a burying ground. The second and by far more interesting suit was filed on March 6, 1871 against the city, both railroads, and the heirs of William Doherty by Elias Gaver, Chester Johnson, and Horton Howard "for themselves and numerous others in like situation" who were lot owners in the Doherty tract.