05/17/2026
Buried Beside the Stone: The Story of Cedarville’s Old Baptist Cemetery
While placing flags on veterans’ graves today, I spent some time walking through Cedarville’s Old Baptist Cemetery. I have visited the cemetery many times over the years, but today I realized how many people likely pass by without ever knowing this small pioneer graveyard exists. Quietly tucked along the edge of the massive stone quarry, it holds some of the earliest history of the Cedarville area.
At first glance, the cemetery appears small and easy to overlook, but the graves scattered across this limestone shelf tell a much larger story. Buried here are some of the area’s earliest settlers, frontier families, veterans, and laborers, their graves spanning generations of local families and early settlement beside the same stone landscape that still defines this part of Greene County today.
The cemetery itself occupies a small parcel on the north side of Turnbull Road, just east of State Route 72, directly bordering the Martin Marietta Cedarville Quarry. As limestone operations expanded throughout the 20th century, heavy machinery carved deep into the earth around the surrounding property. The cemetery managed to survive because the burial ground remained legally protected, preserving a small section of the original landscape while the quarry expanded around it.
Like many early rural burial grounds, the cemetery was likely associated with a nearby meetinghouse used by a small Baptist congregation serving the surrounding farming community. Most frontier churches were simple structures built close to the families they served, and cemeteries commonly grew beside them. If a church once stood here, it was likely modest in appearance, possibly constructed of timber or rough-cut limestone gathered locally. These early congregations emphasized local church autonomy and simplicity in worship, gathering without the elaborate architecture or formal organization that became more common later in the 19th century.
The cemetery records show several pioneer families appearing throughout the burial ground across multiple generations, including the McFarlands, McClellans, and Crawfords. One of the veterans whose grave received a flag today was Robert McFarland, who lived from 1784 to 1869. Historical records indicate the McFarland family migrated into the Cedarville area in 1809, placing them among the earliest waves of settlers establishing homes in this part of Greene County. During the years leading into the War of 1812, Robert McFarland was commissioned as a lieutenant in the local Ohio militia, serving during a period when frontier settlements across Ohio remained vulnerable along the western frontier. His lifetime ultimately stretched from the years following the American Revolution through the aftermath of the Civil War, watching the area change from frontier settlement into an established farming community.
The McClellan family established a major presence within the cemetery as well, with burials ranging from family patriarchs to young children lost during the hardships of pioneer life. William A. McClellan, born in 1773, lived through the earliest years of the United States and survived into the middle of the Civil War era, passing away in 1863 at the age of 90. The Crawfords also left a lasting mark on the burial ground. Elizabeth Crawford died in 1870 at the remarkable age of 103, an extraordinary lifespan for someone born during the colonial era.
Among the cemetery’s aging stones, one monument stands apart almost immediately. More preserved and far more elaborate than many of the surrounding markers, the well-preserved zinc monument is covered in decorative detail, including carved chain links, floral patterns, an anchor, a dove, and an hourglass. Even before reading the inscription, the monument draws attention and curiosity in a cemetery otherwise marked by weathered limestone and fading names.
The monument belongs to a twelve-year-old boy named John “Johnnie” McClellan. Though some cemetery transcriptions capture only names and dates, the face of this zinc monument explicitly details a late-nineteenth-century industrial tragedy. The inscription notes that Johnnie was killed at the local lime works of D.S. Ervin on April 12, 1877, by a wire chain used in the daily operations of the quarry machinery. Rather than being financed by the boy’s family, the side of the stone reveals that the monument was entirely erected by D.S. Ervin, the owner of the lime works himself. The monument remains one of the cemetery’s most unusual and revealing pieces of local history.
Some of the oldest graves reveal just how early this burial ground began. Among the earliest known burials is three-year-old Mary J. McClellan, daughter of William A. McClellan mentioned earlier, who was laid to rest in 1811, only a few years after Ohio achieved statehood. Her burial places the origins of the cemetery deep within the area’s earliest frontier era. Later burials, including members of the Bell family and other early settlers, show the cemetery remained active across multiple generations of pioneer life.
After the late 1800s, burials became far less common, reflecting the gradual fading of the original congregation and changing patterns within the surrounding community. The cemetery contains several Civil War veterans, including Wallace Jackson, Martin McClellan, and Sanford Wilson. Although the burial ground remained in limited use during the 20th century, only a small number of interments took place after 1900, most connected to families already tied to the cemetery across generations. A handful of burials continued into the 1940s, followed by a long gap before the final known interment, James Martin Weimer, in 1973.
Over time, the original church structure most likely disappeared through abandonment, deterioration, or removal. Today, the place where it might have once stood has largely returned to brush, trees, and woodland growth, forming a narrow natural barrier that almost conceals the massive quarry rising just beyond it.
Today, the site remains a classic inactive pioneer cemetery, preserved in one of the most unusual settings in the Cedarville area. On one side stand the weathered limestone markers of the 19th century, many marked by weathered carvings, faded inscriptions, and the worn craftsmanship typical of 19th-century pioneer cemeteries, ranging from elaborate monuments to humble limestone markers. On the other side rises the massive modern quarry, where machinery continues cutting into the same limestone landscape that surrounded these families nearly two centuries ago.
Nearly two centuries of weather and erosion have taken a visible toll on the cemetery. The soft limestone markers have endured generations of Ohio winters, vegetation growth, and environmental exposure, leaving many stones broken, tilted, or partially swallowed by the earth. Because these fragile graves remain vulnerable to both time and weather, preservation efforts and cemetery transcription records remain essential to preserving their history. Even as the stones continue to fade, those records help ensure the names and stories of the area’s earliest settlers are not permanently lost to history.
