Bethel Church Cemetery
Greenfield Township, Fairfield County, Ohio
Marker Inscription
This cemetery has its origin in the early nineteenth century, when the Bethel Church congregation worshiped… at Stringtown and Pleasantville Roads… until approximately 1930… buried here include several Union soldiers… Arnold, Wagner, and Weakley families…… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
Set in the rolling farmland of Fairfield County, this burial ground grew up around the Bethel Church congregation, whose members gathered to worship near the crossing of Stringtown and Pleasantville Roads in the early 1800s — the first generation to settle and farm this corner of central Ohio. The graveyard remained in active use for well over a century, until roughly 1930, gathering the families who built the surrounding community. Among those laid to rest here are several Union soldiers who marched off to the Civil War, alongside the Arnold, Wagner, and Weakley families whose names recur across the local record.
Why it matters
Small rural church cemeteries like this one are the quiet archives of nineteenth-century America, holding the pioneers, farmers, and Civil War soldiers whose ordinary lives knit together the young nation's heartland.
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Related people
- · Arnold family
- · Wagner family
- · Weakley family
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
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