By early 1789 an Ohio Company surveyor, Anselm Tupper, had already noted in his field notes that the rapids at Wolf Creek would make a good site for a much needed mill. Soon after at Marietta, thirty-nine men formed the Wolf Creek Association. On April 20, 1789, an advanced party of nineteen men and their families landed at the mouth of Tuttle’s Run about one half mile below present day Beverly. Since the Belpre Association had formed a few days earlier, the Wolf Creek Association was called the Second Association.

Before settlers could occupy their land, company surveyors first had to divide it into rectangular, numbered lots which were later assigned by lottery to settlers. In early 1789 Ohio Company surveyor Jeffrey Matthewson divided the peninsula at the mouth of Wolf Creek into thirty-nine three-acre lots, one for each Associate. Each man was also assigned a house lot. The house lots were probably all confined to lot 30 in order to make a compact settlement, advantageous in case of Indian attack.

When Matthewson surveyed three-acre lots 14, 15, 19, 23, and 24 on the peninsula, he left within their boundaries an unnumbered cemetery lot. Whether the Ohio Company or the Second Association instructed him to do so is unknown. But it was obviously planned. In effect, he had surveyed the boundary of the cemetery. This likely explains why no property deed has been located for the original part of Waterford Cemetery.

The field notes for many of the Ohio Company surveyors are at Marietta College’s Legacy Library. This includes six books of Matthewson’s 1789 field notes, but none exist for 1789 surveys in Range 10, Township 5 (which includes the peninsula). This is unfortunate since field notes might provide the day and month in 1789 when Matthewson laid out the peninsula and possibly indicate that the unnumbered lot near the middle was the burying ground. Many of the deeds of the original Associates state that Matthewson was the surveyor and Browning’s 1828 survey supports this based on the testimony of the earliest settlers.

It could be said that an area is not a cemetery until the first burial is made. On the other hand, since the survey reserved the land for a cemetery, it could be said that Waterford Cemetery, at least by design, is as old as Waterford itself.

As mentioned in an earlier article, part of a lot at the mouth of Wolf Creek was set aside for a public lumber yard. With town lots, surrounding three-acre lots, a lumber yard and a public burying ground, the Waterford settlement was well planned.

Certainly other cemeteries in Ohio predate the arrival of the Ohio Company in 1788. One of the oldest is at Gnadenhutten, dating back to 1775 when an Indian convert died there. Even before this there were thousands of Indian burial mounds in Ohio.

How many soldiers, traders, wives, camp women, and others died and were buried at Fort Harmar is difficult to determine. There is no mention in the records of a common burial site in or near the fort. With respect to Ohio Company settlers, Judge James Varnum was the first death at Marietta. He died in 1789, followed by others later in the year. They were buried in private plots. Captain Zebulon King, born in 1750, is a candidate for an early cemetery burial in Cedarville Cemetery at Belpre. His marker notes that he died on April 30, 1789, “First White Man Killed by Indians.”

Late Marietta College professor Owen P. Hawley in his masterful work, “Mound Cemetery,” notes that at Marietta the Ohio Company first planned a cemetery on January 21, 1796. It was located in an area later known as Emerson Hill. It is also claimed that Harmar Cemetery was begun in 1796. But with respect to grounds officially surveyed for the purpose of burying the dead, the Waterford Cemetery may be the oldest surveyed (albeit indirectly) burying ground in the Ohio Company.

As in all old graveyards in southeastern Ohio, many graves were not marked for want of money or material. No doubt in some cemeteries the first grave was that of a child. Many sandstone markers have long since crumbled or become illegible. The oldest marked grave in the Waterford Cemetery is for Sherman Waterman who died in 1795, the last white man killed by Indians in Washington County. According to an entry in The Beverly Dispatch on November 11, 1881, Waterman’s original marker was replaced with a new one, presumably the one marking his grave today.

The number of veterans of the Revolutionary War buried at Waterford is unknown. The original marker at the grave of Captain John Dodge, who died in 1805, vanished long ago. A small funeral home marker is all that now identifies the site. Captain William Gray, commander of Fort Frye during the Indian Wars, was buried in Waterford in 1812. His grave is marked with a ground level bronze marker. The burial in 1831 of General Eli Cogswell, who lived near the intersection of State Routes 60 and 83 north of Beverly, is one that reminds us that this cemetery served both sides of the river.

The next article will discuss Browning’s 1828 survey of the cemetery and later additions.

Phillip L. Crane, a Waterford resident and Marietta history teacher for 32 years, will share stories of historical events in the Lower Muskingum Valley.