NEW HAVEN – An abandoned cemetery in Adams Township could be restored with the help of a surprise benefactor.
The owner of the 5-acre wooded lot and field at Paulding and Hartzell roads placed the property – including the remains of the 40 or so people buried there – up for auction Tuesday night. Neighbors flocked to the site to see what would become of the long-abandoned cemetery, worried that an unwitting buyer would try to dig a basement for a new house only to discover the remains.
The property was once the home of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ohio Synod, established in the mid-1800s. The church changed names and, about 1871, merged with a Marion Township congregation to form what is today Emmanuel Lutheran Church on Wayne Trace, according to local officials.
The church structure is long gone, and the headstones are no longer visible among the dense brush and grass.
Neighbors said someone bulldozed the stones in the early 1980s. Some said the stones were removed from the site. But remnants have been found on a neighboring farm, said Keith Mensing, who grew up across from the old cemetery and remembers playing among the headstones as a child.
State Rep. Phyllis Pond, R-New Haven, believes some of the stones remain buried in the low-lying ground. And she hopes to determine who is buried in the little cemetery so they can be listed on a plaque along with their birth and death dates, she said.
Pond lives a mile north of the abandoned cemetery and has fielded calls from people concerned about preserving the site.
As auctioneer, Ron Wiegmann took bids on the property Tuesday, neighbors spoke angrily about attempts to sell what they consider sacred ground.
“It’s disrespectful,” Carolyn Deweese, who grew up nearby, said of the auction. “Our roots, it’s the most important thing. To destroy it is cruel.”
But their anger melted into contentment when they learned the new owner’s plans.
Don Stinson of Fort Wayne agreed to buy all 5.16 acres for $10,000, well below the going price for farmland.
He plans to restore and protect the cemetery before turning it over to Adams Township for maintenance, he said.
“I’m 84. I’ve got to find something to do,” Stinson said from inside his Buick parked along Paulding Road. “I think I’ll have pretty good luck.”
Stinson previously restored a historic cemetery in Anderson where many of his relatives and ancestors are buried. And when he learned the story of the Paulding Road cemetery, he decided to try to buy the property, he said.
“I’m glad,” Mensing said. He and other neighbors were worried the new owner would disturb the remains. They want the cemetery site protected.
“We’re all Lutherans,” Mensing said. “You don’t disturb the resting place of the dead.”
Pond called Stinson’s plan an ideal solution.
“He came out of the blue,” she said.
She wants neighbors, relatives and members of Emmanuel Lutheran to band together and help Stinson with the research and to restore the site. She urged them to keep tabs on the project to ensure the work begins.
“I hope the end result is in a few months we’ll see the gravestones dug out and a little white fence around it,” Pond said.
