Israel Donalson / Manchester Founders Cemetery

Israel Donalson was a member of Ohio’s First Constitutional Convention. In May 1800, Congress passed an act dividing the Northwest Territory, with the western division becoming Indiana Territory and the eastern called the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River. Two years later, thirty-five delegates from the nine counties of that eastern division met in Chillicothe to draw up the constitution for the new state of Ohio, which became a state in 1803. Donalson was the last survivor of the convention, dying in 1860 at the age of 93. A frontiersman, he served Manchester as a surveyor, schoolteacher, postmaster, and judge in the first court. In 1791, one month after arriving at Massie’s Station, he was captured by Native Americans, and his memoir recounts his capture and escape. Donalson also served as an Elder for the first Presbyterian church in Adams County, which stood on these grounds. Adams County, the third oldest in Ohio, was formed on July 10, 1791, and named for incumbent U.S. President John Adams. That same year Nathaniel Massie founded Manchester as a stockaded village, sometimes called Massie’s Station, and attracted early settlers by giving them property in town and a few nearby acres. In this wilderness, where there were no roads and travel depended on the Ohio River, only people with varied skills, stamina, and frontier knowledge were drawn there. Founded in 1791, Manchester Founders Cemetery contains the gravesites of 300 people, including many original families such as the Ellisons, Wades, Andersons, Edingtons, Trenerys, Cooleys, and Donalsons.

Manchester, Ohio · United States