Cemetery unearths war history REVOLUTIONARY WAR VET. The burial marker for Revolutionary War veteran John Reese can be found in a forgotten little graveyard at the southeast corner of Louisville Road and Broadway Avenue SE. Reese helped found a church near the site in the summer of 1833 and died on Dec. 4 of that year. Repository / Stan Myers By JAN H. KENNEDY Repository staff writer NIMISHILLEN TWP. — History and a bit of mystery rest in a tiny graveyard on the southeast corner of Broadway Avenue and Route 153. The cemetery includes the gravesites of a Revolutionary War veteran, six Civil War soldiers and a unknown veteran of the “World War.” In the summer of 1833, John Reese, who served in the Revolutionary War, and several other men founded the Fairhope Evangelical Church, said the decendant church’s pastor, the Rev. Scott Hayward. When Reese died on Dec. 24, 1833, he was the first to be buried in the church cemetery. According to information in Volume 2 of “Cemetery Inscriptions: Stark County, Ohio,” 110 people were buried there; all but four before the 20th century. Two large stones surrounded by greenery in the center of the graveyard belong to David and George Reese; their markers say they served in the Civil War. John Reese’s grave is about 6 feet to the north, a smaller, black stone leaning forward. It remains readable, perhaps because the lean protects the face from direct wind, rain and sun. In addition to the three Reeses, five others have metal markers next to their gravestones denoting military service, four from the Civil War. The eighth is an enigma. It has a round marker with a U.S. in the center, around which is written “World War Veteran.” Erosion has stolen much information from the stone, but a World War I veteran couldn’t have been buried until at least 1917. But in “Cemetery Inscriptions,” no burials were recorded after 1905 until 1941, when a woman was buried in the cemetery. She was the last interred there. The cemetery was dedicated by the church in 1933 on the 100th anniversary of the church’s founding. Next to the church was a house where the pastor lived. In 1943, the church burned down, and with it went all of the cemetery’s records, Hayward said. A new church was built a little east of the old church, and the church’s name changed to Fairhope Evangelical United Brethren Church. It became Fairhope United Methodist Church in 1968. In 1963, the parsonage and cemetery were sold to James B. and Nellie L. Miller, who lived in the house until they sold it in 1973 to Jack E. and Emma L. Vick of Louisville. The Vicks lived in the house until the early 1990s; it stood unoccupied for a couple of years until the Vicks sold the lot with the house to their son. He razed the old house and put up a new one. Jack and Emma Vick continue to own the cemetery. “We didn’t buy it because of the cemetery, just for the house,” Jack Vick said. “Right now I don’t have any idea what I’ll do with it. Maybe deed it to my son so he can build a garage on the corner section. I think there’s room there for a garage.” Although the Vicks had no connection to the cemetery, it was Jack’s aunt, Hazel Brown Murphy, who provided what information is known today about the cemetery. She led a group from the Canton Genealogy Society in categorizing all of the Stark County cemeteries in 1982, finishing in 1986. The seven volumes are at the Stark County District Library. “When the suggestion was made to take down all the information on every gravestone in the county, the genealogy society said it was too big a job,” said Shirley Keener of Lake Township, a niece of Hazel Brown Murphy. “That was the wrong thing to say to Hazel. I don’t know that she’d have got involved if they hadn’t told her it couldn’t be done.” Only about 50 of the gravestones remain, and it is possible someone moved some of the markers over the years. But the marker by Reese’s grave is accurate, as is another in the front row. The stone says “Unknown U.S. Soldier,” and has a GAR marker by it, denoting the Grand Army of the Republic, an association of Union Army veterans of the Civil War. Nearly a third of the remaining readable gravestones have the name Lesh on them. Other names include Chenot, Ringer, Stambaugh, Tombaugh, Henninger and Conrad. You can reach Jan H. Kennedy at 580-8325 or e-mail: