USA > Ohio > Allen County > A standard history of Allen county, Ohio : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development > Part 71
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While men and women may be happiest when they are working hardest, it holds good in Allen County as in the rest of the world, that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and the farmer as well as his city friend has respite today : they sometimes visit pleasure resorts, while drudgery was all that either of them knew a generation ago. In the old days of back-breaking hard work, men and women of Allen County had little time or inclination to plan intellectual improvement, but for many years the Grange has been a mitigating influence in the rural communities, and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the study clubs have relieved the situation in the towns; everywhere people are recognizing the benefits from recreation. There are social advantages undreamed of a generation ago ; the daily mail, the telephone and the auto- mobile have revolutionized living conditions, and isolation no longer char- acterizes the rural communities; the traveler seeing Allen County by automobile or areoplane gets an eye-full in a day's ride and when one notes the atmosphere of prosperity everywhere, it is difficult to reconcile some of the stories of the long ago; the daughter in the home has studied the piano; the son no longer plays the fiddle, but draws his bow
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across the strings of the musical violin, and all of this within the memory of men and women not yet old in Allen County history.
The fact may be emphasized again that there were hardships and privations when every home was a factory, and besides the hearthstone sat the family shoemaker. There were no shoe stores, and there were no ready to wear garments; while some young men visit tailors, where is the youth who has ever visited a shoemaker and left his measure? The fathers know all about the copper-toed, red topped split leather boots of years ago; the French heel had not yet been seen in the community. What has become of the bootjack of the long ago? When the spli leather boots became water soaked, the boys could not remove them without it. The boot jack now consigned to oblivion was once part of the family history. Perhaps there is not so much change in the leather today, but drainage and improved highways have brought about many changes noticeable to those who look backward over the lapse of half a century ; were it not for these changed physical conditions the bootjack would still be in requisition; the boys are still inclined to wade in the water; however, many of them would not recognize a bootjack if they saw it.
The full evening dress suit of the cabin epoch in Allen County history was donned in the early morning ; it was buckskin breeches and a flax shirt, with home-made moccasins for the feet, and all were products of home industry-home tailors and shoemakers; the women cut their garments by guess and experiment, since fifty years ago they could not buy those marvelous patterns in stores; they sewed by hand until the first rude sewing machines were on the market; when the hand sewing machines of the first model were introduced, a woman would go on horseback many miles to have ruffles hemmed on those chain machines that would ravel when a stitch was broken, and sometimes all her trouble would be for nothing. Although they covered honest men and women, there was not much design to the garments of the long ago; today the clothier carries all sizes and textiles, the mothers are no longer the home tailors, some not even making their own kitchen aprons; the woman who can knot a sewing thread on one hand is the exception.
While those who are willing to pay more money still visit good tailors, there are many men in Allen County who are content with hand- me-downs except perhaps for one good suit a year, and misfits do not distress them; there are good furnishing stores in all the towns. The pleasures of horseback riding render that old-fashioned measure of travel a pastime today for those who can afford it, but there are men and women still living who witnessed the transformation. It has been a long time since any one borrowed fire in Allen County, nor are there any coals kept alive on the hearthstones; while sometimes "coals of fire are heaped on the heads" of others, the woman who lighted her pipe with a coal has long since gone the way of the world. When sickness overtakes the family today, it is a trained nurse who comes into the home instead of the friendly ministrations of some neighbor woman. The woman of today finds time to go to her club, while the pioneer mother always ironed every dish cloth on both sides, and when she had finished the ironing she set herself some other task; she was always busy with much serving, regardless of the fact that Mary of old had chosen the better part while Martha neglected nothing at all.
There are Marys and Marthas in Allen County today, and Mary seems to get the most out of her life because she omits some of the unnecessary details ; the minister's wife who unblushingly admitted that she had rather read a book than shine a cook stove was perhaps a truth- ful woman. However, times are changed ; there are mothers who pat their
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pickles as they can them while sometimes their daughters are inclined to hurry through such operation ; they find time for magazines and books, and who is right-mother or daughter? On account of her much serving,. Martha sometimes becomes little more than a bundle of nerves, while Mary escapes the thralldom of servitude by asserting herself in the club and intellectual life of the community. Martha has need of the family physician much oftener than Mary, who has learned the value of respite from the daily round of unnecessary drudgery.
When the Cincinnati cheap buggy was first on the market in the '80s, the changed social life was soon apparent; while all the horses were trained to "carry double," and bridal parties had often traveled that way, the well-to-do people went away from their own homes oftener, and they soon adopted many hitherto unknown customs ; while the pioneer mother had an up-on-block outside the front yard fence when the chip- pile was at the side of the road, and there was a hitching post in front of every house in town, the Cincinnati buggy was the beginning of the tranformation and the automobile is the last word in family travel ; the surplus farm products are brought to town in an automobile. While some Allen County families still have breakfast, dinner and supper, some only have a cup of coffee in the morning with a noonday luncheon, and the formal dinner in the evening makes up for what the others lacked in variety. The story is told that the pot once called the kettle black, and there are still men and women in Allen County who insist on the right names for things.
Nevertheless, it behooves the citizen of the twentieth century and who is stepping over into the second century in local history, to make obeisance to those who operated the spinning wheel and looms; who stood at the forge or sat on the cobbler's bench; the women who knew so well the secrets of good cookery before the fire; the men who knew all about self denial under wilderness conditions; the experiences of the fathers and mothers would be a revelation to many who are on the firing line of civilization today.
CHAPTER LI
GOD'S ACRE-ALLEN COUNTY CEMETERIES
"There is a Reaper whose name is Death," and he has been abroad in Allen County the same as in the rest of the world, and yet there are some who linger so long they wonder if God has not forgotten them; there are some who have been spared beyond the allotted years of man; they have lingered so long they feel the import of the song: "The last rose of summer left blooming alone," and there are some who more or less impatiently await the summons from the Messenger reputed to ride the pale horse, and they say: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"
The shadowy boatman carries passengers only one way across the river-the River of Death; he never ferries them back again. In He- brews IX :27, it is written : "And so it is appointed unto man once to die," and Job inquires : "If a man die shall he live again ?" While it is an age old question, many do not stop to answer it. In Ecclesiastes it is written : "For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything," and the grave seems to end it all. In very truth, the tomb is a stately mansion, a dignified tribute to the souls of the departed; because the choice of a suitable family memorial is a matter for consideration and careful decision, it is becoming more and more an established custom for men of affairs to effect this decision within their own lifetimes, to "build more stately mansions" of their own selection ; that the decision so often rests upon a memorial shaped in Rock of Ages granite is wholly natural, and a visit to Allen County cemeteries reveals the fact that the living do pay lasting tributes to their friends who have begun the ageless life beyond the confines of earth.
One enthusiastic marble dealer declares that progress in civilization is shown by the marks of lasting respect paid to the dead, and it is related that at the height of civilization Egypt built costly pyramids for its kings and queens and that their mummified bodies are still preserved there. Sacred history records that Abraham bought the cave Machpelah and had its rocky interior cut into crypts or compartments for himself and Sarah ;. they were later entombed there. The Lord Jesus Christ was laid in a rock-hewed crypt-Joseph's own new tomb, and thus it is shown that the early Christians followed the custom of building mausoleums now in vogue again; the great men and women of history have usually been placed in mausoleums to sleep through the succeeding ages, and the public and private mausoleums so prevalent today are but the revival of an ancient custom.
While in Westminster Abbey the graves are on top of one and another, that condition will hardly prevail in Allen County before cremation gains in popularity, or the many burying grounds become more crowded than they are today. An old account says : "Where are our prominent citizens of forty or fifty years ago? You will find many of them sleeping in old cemeteries, neglected and forgotten," and the query brings the feeling: "O for the touch of the vanished hand, and the sound of the voice that is still," but since life is a workshop, a preparatory school for the hereafter, why shrink from the grave? It is a comforting thought when friends stand by those lowly mounds: "The good that men do lives after them while the evil is interred with their bones."
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That veteran historian, Henry Howe, displays the true philosophy and courage when he says: "Old age! That is folly! Live young and you will die young; learn to laugh Time out of his arithmetic; amuse him with some new game of marbles; then on some fine summer's day you will take a quiet nap, and when you awake maybe find yourself clothed in the pure white garments of eternal youth." It was Thomas Moore who said: "Come, grow old with me; the best of life is yet to be," and yet old age clings to youth and few are ready to bid adieu to the world. Some one has said: "Life is just one thing after another," and a flying trip throughout Allen County reveals one rural cemetery after another ; while it is a good place to live there is no lease on the future. A recent newspaper advertisement went the rounds of the humorous paragraphers : "Sympathetic funeral service from $50 and up," and the casual observer said he "would like a $100 job," and there are funeral directors who speak of doing a good business. While some men have "money to burn," unless the funeral director is alert he sometimes "buries" his money.
Someone visiting a cemetery remarked: "Here lie the dead and here the living lie," when he read the gravestone tributes to those who were silently sleeping there; while the proverbial six feet of earth is all the realty some people ever expect to occupy-hardly a possession after they attain it, others are cremated and thus escape the long wait in the grave. A beautiful sentiment is couched in the following :
"All over all our lives anew, Will stretch a kindly sky of blue; The tulips will come springing up To catch the subeams in a cup, And every one of them will say, 'We were not dead, but just away,'"
and that is the way many people like to think of their departed friends ; "They are not dead-they're just away."
When men and women have rounded out their lives in one community, they usually look forward to being buried there: "Live where you will, but after all you owe this sacred spot your bones." It is but natural that Allen County citizens look forward to being buried in Allen County ; while in life they may wander far from their native heath, in death Allen County soil suits them better than any other spot in the world. The first Allen County cemetery is now the site of the Moulton Lumber Company on East North street at Tanner or Central avenue; since 1905, the site has been a lumber yard, freight depot, etc., and it has been built over twice since it was a cemetery; whenever there is occasion for excavating workmen find evidence of the fact that the place was once a graveyard; the Lutheran church that stood by the cemetery has been converted into a bottling works, and while the Elijah Stites military funeral occurred there January 6, 1843, there is no trace of the marker- the place a shrine of the Revolutionary war. Nothing is known there of the "old leaning slab" that marked the grave of this Revolutionary patriot, mentioned in the Military chapter.
An old account says: "The first burying place has long since been vacated, and all but a few of the bodies have been removed to what was called the 'new cemetery,' farther out of town," and the "New Cemetery" near the Gramm-Bernstein factory is also long since abandoned as a burial plot, although many bodies still repose there; it may never be wholly abandoned as a "City of the Dead." Just what will be done with
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one's bones is about as uncertain as life itself. Robert Bowers, who chronicled many things in his day, said: "We started a graveyard at an early date without the necessity of killing a man to accomplish this end-the State gave us one," and considerable inquiry failed to elicit any explanation. There is a National Military Cemetery at Fort Amanda established there when the ravages of disease cut down the young soldiers in the War of 1812, and the Fort Amanda Monument, erected in 1915, is sacred to the memory of about seventy-five nameless heroes; there are government markers at about forty of the graves, it being impossible to definitely locate the others. The Dawson gravestone is the only one bearing the name of the silent sleeper there.
While this Military cemetery is now outside of Allen County, the reservation attracts many local visitors; before the Shawnees left Allen County, they leveled all the mounds where their dead lay buried; it is related that De Soto found burial in the Mississippi-the river that he discovered, so that the Indians might not know that the white men had lost their leader, and from some occult reason the Shawnees did not want the people who followed them to know their places of burial; while it is understood that Pe-Aitch-Ta ( Pht) whose wigwam was near the Council House in Shawnee, was buried in his own door yard in 1832, there is no trace of his grave today ; it was dug by his wife and daughter, and the bottom and sides were lined with split puncheons, and three puncheons were placed over him; the grave with this rude coffin was only two feet deep, and from there he went to the Happy Hunting Grounds rather than go with his tribe to the Reservation ; many of the Shawnees witnessed the burial, and deposited trinkets in the grave; a monument marking the site and inscribed : "Gone to the Better Land." would have meant nothing to Pht, who demonstrated the fact that he thought there was no better place than Allen County.
While the grave of Pht is unknown today, the records say that when he died the Shawnees killed a beef, and they had funeral baked meats and a feast; the burial ceremony was at the Council House which remained standing for many years after the builders had taken their sor- rowful journey ; it was built of walnut, wild cherry and white oak logs hewn to a nicety with a broad ax; there were weight poles on the clap- board roof, it was two stories high and there were two doors, and there was an outside stick-and-clay chimney at the north end of the house; it was only used for public occasions, but were it standing today it would be preserved as a monument to the Shawnees-sacred to the memory of Pe-Aitch-Ta. While Pht and Quilna were brothers, it is related that twenty-one different Indians along Hog Creek owned 500 acres of land apiece, and an Indian monument would bear the names. Pe-Aitch-Ta, On-a-was-kine, Wa-pes-ke-ka-ho-thew, Shin-a-gaw-ma-she, Pe-haw-e-ou, Ne-qua-ka-buch-ka, Pe-lis-ka, Ke-tu-che-pa, Law-et-che-to, E-pan-nee, Ka-nak-hih, Joso, She-she-co-pe-a, Le-cu-seh, Quilna and Que-das-ka- all these names are associated with the Council House in local history. While history relates that Griffith Breese and Ezekiel Hover later lived in the Council House, it remains in memory sacred to the swarthy Shawnees.
There are stories told of solitary graves sequestered in Allen County, and there are a great many unmarked graves-more in the town than in rural cemeteries; the names in the directories do not always coincide with the names on tombstones, and in time some of the pioneers are forgotten unless they are commemorated in biographical sketches by their posterity who enjoy the fruition of their labors; who are bene- fited by their early operations and investments. Some one says :
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" 'Tis better to send a cheap bouquet, To a friend that's living this very day, Than a bushel of roses-white and red, To lay on his coffin when he's dead,"
and one of the literary jokesmiths declares:
"A little bit of Taffy When one's alive, I say, Beats a lot of Epitaphy When one has passed away,"
and better always than epitaphs :
"Let us bring to the living the roses, And the lillies we bind for the dead : And crown them with blessings and praises --- Before the brave spirit has fled,"
THE ENTRANCE TO WOODLAWN CEMETERY
but perhaps the epitaph hunter would never visit local cemeteries in quest of the unusual, love for the dead in most instances manifesting itself in the form of suitable markers at the graves.
While every community has its "city of the dead," and some have been sent from Allen County to the crematory in Cleveland and other cities, Woodlawn and Gethsemane are as connecting links in a chain of parks at the edge of Lima; although burial plots they are beautiful as the parks adjoining them. The arched gateway and lodge at Woodlawn is a bequest to the community from John R. Hughes who was an early citizen of Lima; there is a small chapel and people may tarry a while with their dead before consigning them to their long rest in the tomb; it is a Hughes Memorial in all that the word implies, a grateful public always recognizing the giver in the gift. Lying side by side in beautiful Woodlawn are fathers and mothers ; husbands and wives whose
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names belong to the early history of the community ; they were the men and women who carried on business activities in the little town that was laid out by them for future greatness; it is a tribute to their enter- prise and industry.
The site of Woodlawn cemetery along the Ottawa was purchased by B. C. Faurot and George G. Hackedorn ; they were men with vision suffi- cient to recognize its possibilities ; it was a beauty spot and a necessary institution. The Hand of Nature had already adorned it, and there was little left for the landscape artist to do in planning the driveways leading throughout Woodlawn; the ravines were widened, and nature's lines remain to show the world the adaptability of the spot; the first burial in Woodlawn was the mother of Mr. Faurot, while Mr. Hackedorn himself was the second person buried there; while it is only a coincidence, it seems that the promoters recognized their own needs in opening Wood- lawn cemetery. It is beautiful for spacious hillslopes and ravines, and seen on a winter day or when clothed with summer verdure, the visitor recognizes the wisdom of selecting such a spot for the sleep of the ages ; the last resting place of Lima's dead is as charming as were their homes in the community.
Some of the private mausoleums in Woodlawn are built into the hills, and they seem sheltered from the storms of winter and the swelter- ing heat of summer; near the Hackedorn mausoleum is Hackedorn lake -an expanse of clear water, and all around are marble shafts as well as mausoleums, perpetuating the names of well known men and women; there is charming simplicity in the plan of Woodlawn-the shrubbery in conformity to the driveways through the ravines, and at every turn there is some new beauty-some surprise to the visitor; harmony is the key note of everything. On the C. S. Brice monument is the Bible inscription : "Let not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in me," and it rests as a benediction over the tombs of all.
While Lima has had two earlier cemeteries than Woodlawn and Gethsemane, and only a few families have ever buried in the plot adjoin- ing Fort Amanda Military Cemetery, cemeteries used today in Allen county are : Walnut Grove at Delphos ; Hartsog is a rural cemetery near Delphos, and across the Allen-Van Wert county line is another rural cemetery used by Allen County citizens ; most smaller towns have one cemetery, as: Bluffton, Spencerville, Lafayette, Westminster, Elida, Allentown, and Gomer; the Elida cemetery is called Greenlawn and Gomer is Pike Run. Other rural cemeteries are : Salem, Fletcher, Christy, Hartford, Shawnee, St. Matthews, Salem (in Perry and Sugar Creek- two Salems), the Sugar Creek Salem being a Mennonite cemetery ; Ash Grove, Rockport, Ward, Tony's Nose, and the Potter's Field; while the name Tony is unexplained, no one would ask about the Nose who visited Tony's Nose cemetery, and not far from it is the Potter's Field at the county farm in Bath township. In a number of the Allen County cemeteries are private mausoleums, and in some are community mau- soleums with crypts sold out to individuals, or in many instances stock holders built them. Some of the cemeteries are provided with receiving vaults where bodies rest for a short time before they are finally consigned to the final resting place.
While there are unmarked graves and some abandoned family burial plots on Allen County homesteads, the people have been inclined to mark the last resting place of their departed friends in appropriate way-in a manner in keeping with life opportunities; "They just have an old style stone," said an aged woman in discussing a family, showing that fashions change in grave stones as in other things. The children
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used to count buttons : "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief," and all these lie side by side in the silence of the tombs in the different cemeteries. While the mausoleums used by different families remain open, when the last crypt is filled it is the custom then to seal them; there is a system of ventilation said to be wholly sanitary, and through the circulation of air complete mummifica- tion results in time ; the Egyptians had a secret, and a mummy may be preserved to the end of world.
While longevity is a boast of Allen County citizens, satistics and gravestones show that many have yielded to the ravages of disease in childhood and early manhood and womanhood; the old must die and the young do die, and a conclusion reached by science is: "We are in the infancy and childhood of knowledge as to how to prevent and cure disease." On September 13, 1908, at the time of the seventy-fifth anni- versary of the coming of the Welsh to Allen County, W. W. Watkins who was the first Welsh child born in Allen county reviewed his life, saying that forty-two of his relatives lay buried at Pike Run near Gomer; he enumerated grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, children and grandchildren and a stepmother was included, and he was looking forward to his own last sleep among them. The first burial in Pike Run Cemetery was a child-Mary Roberts; the coffin was made from boards split from trees felled for the purpose. There is an epitaph in the Welsh tongue on the stone marking the grave of Mrs. Cadwallader Jones, the translation reading :
"Of home she was the light and life, A thoughtful mother, faithful wife; In all she acted just and wise, And left a name that never dies.
Special interest attaches to the grave of Moses McClure in the Ward cemetery, Bath township, since he was the first white child born within the present limits of Allen County ; on the marker is the date, December 1, 1827, more than six years from the time the county was given its name and outline, thus conclusively proving that people had not yet begun coming in numbers to the community. Next to the grave of Moses McClure is the grave of his wife, Elizabeth. Moses McClure died Jan- uary 12,1901, not yet having rounded out three quarters of a century. The unique monument-a miniature log cabin replica, was designed by David Wert, a Lima stone cutter for many years; all the details of the primi- tive surroundings under which this man was born are worked out in the marker at his grave ; his picture has been burned into the door of the rep- lica cabin, such an enduring monument and calculated to carry with it so much personal history; the cabin idea is complete to the latch-string at the door, and it is said that a duplicate of it marks the grave of Griffith Thomas in Maplewood Cemetery at Christy Chapel in Amanda Township.
It is related of a pioneer whose age and physical condition did not allow of long rides and exertion; that he said: "But it gives me great pleasure to attend the funerals of my friends." It is a counterpart to the story of the woman who called where a family had just moved into a splendid new house saying: "It would be a fine place in which to hold a funeral service." Customs change in funerals as in other things, and while in some families relatives prepare the body for burial the family grief seemingly mitigated by the performance of those last sad offices themselves, in other households everything is left to the under-
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taker, even to the minutest details of the funeral service. When the time comes in family history that more of its members are sleeping in the cemetery than are surrounding the fireside at home, relatives and friends so many times the remnants of once large families, are impressed with the sacred duty of keeping their memories green, and to them God's Acre will always be a hallowed spot-a sacred shrine to which their pilgrim feet will always turn, when opportunity presents itself.
Those who have followed friends tc city cemeteries where single graves are purchased and the spot thereafter designated by number, better understand the beauty and sacredness of a rural God's Acre, where one does not require the service of a guide in locating the lowly mound again ; there are always tired feet awaiting the rest in the grave, and those who remember the funerals along in the '80s and '90s will recall the obituary notice sent out by most families; they were left by carrier at every house and mailed to out of town friends; they used to toll the church bell, the number of strokes indicating the number of the decedent's years, and usually everybody knew who was seriously sick in the community. While six feet of earth is allotted to every man, some find their allotments in the potter's field; there is usually a place in every cemetery where indigent persons may be laid to molder back to earth. The Recording Angel notes their burial, since "Not a sparrow falleth, but its God doth know," and He is mindful of all.
While in some instances the church yard has survived the rural church, and the living now worship in the towns, the dead sleep on peacefully where worship was once their privilege; in the hereafter an- gels may roll from their graves the stones away, and there will be further trace of them; the passerby today is unconscious when he treads on some of those lowly mounds of earth, and why should the sleep of the ages be disturbed in the onward rush of humanity ? While engaged in dis- cussing the high cost of living some have been confronted with the high cost of dying, but when grief possesses the family the expense account sel- dom enters into the consideration at all. The funerals of "other days" are sacred memories; when they were conducted from rural churches, the dead was carried by loving hands to the church yard adjoining with- out the body being placed in the hearse again, while today it is often a hurried trip to God's Acre, and sometimes burial is private, only rel- atives and chosen friends standing by the new made grave; customs change, and before there were hearses in Allen County, farm wagons were used in carrying the dead from the homes of the settlers, and later spring wagons were used, some neighbor always volunteering his service.
The rural church is still a consideration in Allen County, and the churchyard near it is like Tennyson's Babbling Brook which seems to go on forever ; while some regard it as morally wrong to speak the praises of a man to his face lest they minister to his vanity, thereby encouraging personal pride, when kind words no longer comfort him, why extol his virtues on grave stones? And yet family sentiment is often expressed by personal tributes; if in the interest of science bodies are removed today, the fact seems to escape the newspapers; it used to be said that "body snatchers" robbed graves in order to supply medical colleges with cadavers, and there were some hair-raising, blood-curdling stories told about such things; newspaper readers would stand aghast at such recitals today, although children growing up in Allen County when word-of-mouth was the only source of information frequently heard about them ; they used to say of the hyenas carried about the coun- try in the animal shows that if one were to escape it would dig up a
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whole graveyard in a night, and nervous children did not sleep well until the show had gone from the country.
In writing of New England burial customs, Alice Morse Earle says : "In smaller settlements some out of the way spot was chosen for a common burial place, in barren pasture or on lowly hillside," and the Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, adds :
"Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, Our hills are maple-crowned, But not from them our fathers chose The village burial ground. The dreariest spot in all the land To Death they set apart ; With scanty grace from Nature's hand, And none from that of art"
but New England conditions are not reflected in Allen County cemeteries, some of them being landscape triumphs.
In her New England description, Mrs. Earle says: "To the natural loneliness of the country burial place and to its inevitable sadness, is now too frequently added the gloomy and depressing evidence of human neglect ; briars and weeds grow in tangled thickets over the forgotten graves," and such spots are not unknown in Allen County. The same writer continues: "In many communities each family had its own burial place in some corner of the home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard," thus showing that Allen County settlers coming from New England patterned after older communities. Another writer says: "Truly our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly show us how we may be buried in our survivors," and there are questions that concern the living today. While "Gone to the Better Land," is chiseled on some of the grave stones, there are those who think of Allen County as God's country.
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