Burying the U.S. Army Dead

Pioneer Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Mercer County, contains burials from 1812 to 1873 and includes some of the first Euro-Americans who settled the area, families who helped lay out the town of Fort Recovery, established Recovery and Gibson townships, and started businesses before the village's incorporation in 1858. Samuel McDowell, a survivor of both the Battle of the Wabash and the Battle of Fort Recovery, is buried there; he returned to Fort Recovery in the 1830s as one of the earliest settlers, and his descendants and those of other early pioneers still live in the area. The cemetery also served as a temporary burial site for soldiers who died in the Battle of the Wabash in 1791 and the Battle of Fort Recovery in 1794. In 1851, children playing on the banks of the Wabash River discovered bones of soldiers killed in those battles about 60 years earlier. After the bones were kept safe through the summer while preparations were made, more than 5,000 people from Kentucky, Indiana, Virginia, Tennessee, and Ohio gathered on September 10, 1851, for the celebration called Bone Burying Day, and the remains were taken to Pioneer Cemetery in 13 walnut caskets. In 1891 the soldiers' remains were moved to the site of Monument Park, where they were buried within a wood and iron enclosure for more than 20 years, and in 1913 they were reinterred in a crypt within the current obelisk at Monument Park.

Fort Recovery, Ohio · United States