Erie Street Cemetery

In 1826, after Cleveland's first cemetery closed, village trustees paid Leonard Case Sr. one dollar for eight acres and dedicated the land as Erie Street Cemetery. Because it stood on what became prime property, the cemetery became the center of a century-long struggle between residents and local government. In 1836, trustees set aside space there for a gunpowder magazine and a poorhouse infirmary, and angry heirs of the original lot owners sued Cleveland for infringement of covenant but lost. In the early 1900s, Mayor Tom Johnson's administration failed in an effort to reclaim cemetery land, and later pressure from the Pioneers' Memorial Association and City Manager William Hopkins led the planned Lorain Carnegie Bridge to avoid the cemetery. Although efforts to confiscate land ended, the city neglected the grounds until 1939, when The Early Settler's Association restored the cemetery and built a stone wall around it. Among those buried there are Revolutionary War soldiers Gamaliel Fenton and Asahel Tuttle; Native Americans Chief Joc-O-Sot of the Sauk and Chief Thunderwater of the Oghema; Cleveland mayors Joshua Mills and John W. Allen; Lorenzo and Rebecca Carter of Cleveland's first family; Minerva White, the first person buried there in 1827; and John Malvin, a freed slave, Underground Railroad activist, and canal boat operator, whose wife Harriet joined him as charter members of the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland and helped prevent the church from becoming segregated. The cemetery also contains an unmarked common grave for victims of the 1847 Griffith Disaster and a marked common grave for several victims of the 1916 crib number 5 waterworks tunnel explosion.

Cleveland, Ohio · United States