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Step into the past at Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery, a historic Trumbull County landmark dating back to 1813. Home to pioneer graves, war veterans, and a striking 1912 Greek Revival mausoleum, this burial ground holds the stories of early settlers who shaped Northeast Ohio.
The 1912 mausoleum in the central part of the Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery, constructed by the American Mausoleum Company. (Photo by the author)
A sprawling mass of gravestones set amongst a park-like setting, at first glance the Girard Union Cemetery may not look historic, but a recent development. However, intertwined with the graves of the recently departed, lie the early settlers of Girard and Liberty Township. With the oldest burials located in the central part of the cemetery near the mausoleum extending southward, it was from here that the current cemetery radiated forth from along what is now State Route 422. In 1813, Henry Barnhisel, a native of Berks County, Pennsylvania relocated from his home to Liberty Township and purchased 318 acres of land from the Connecticut Land Company.
Reselling each tract for $1 a piece, he reserved some of the unsold land for a burying ground north of his residence, thus forming the basis of Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery. Gradually expanded throughout the years to the present configuration one sees today, in 1912 the American Mausoleum Company won a contract to erect a mausoleum in the central part of the “new” cemetery, built in granite in the Greek Revival style. A report from the trade magazine “Modern Cemetery” dated 1918 notes “improvements at Liberty Union cemetery in Girard, Ohio are progressing” with “the new addition” being “platted and graded and drives cut.”
Camden Cleaveland
Unfortunately, time and weather has not been kind to Camden Cleaveland’s marble gravestone, as it sits broken leaning against itself. (Photo by the author)
On July 4th, 1796, following a grueling two month journey from the east, Moses Cleaveland 1 , chief agent of the Connecticut Land Company along with 50 men, women, and children reached the northeastern tip of the Connecticut Western Reserve at what is now Conneaut in Ashtabula County. After pulling their boats ashore, under Captain Tinker’s command, the men fired a salute of fifteen rounds, followed by a sixteenth for New Connecticut. Giving three cheers, the group of exhausted settlers christened the area around the mud-choked creek as “Fort Independence” only before making several toasts, downing several pails of grog, and “retiring in remarkable order.”
Approximately eighteen days later, on July 22nd, the group reached the Cuyahoga River, a suitable site for a settlement. Returning to Fort Independence, Clevaveland drafted a plat for streets, and the name bestowed upon the soon-to-be city was “Cleaveland” in honor of the Connecticut Land Company’s chief agent. Returning to Connecticut shortly after, Moses Cleaveland never saw his namesake city, nor the Western Reserve again, however, his youngest brother, Camden would.
Note the different spelling between Cleaveland’s last name and the city of Cleveland. This comes from the fact that in 1831, the Cleaveland Advertiser dropped the “a” from the masthead, thus cementing the city’s name as “Cleveland.”
Born on April 8th, 1778, the last of ten children of Col. Aaron and Thankful (Paine) Cleaveland, Camden married Betsey Adams, also a native of Canterbury on May 25th, 1800 and soon set out for the Western Reserve, purchasing land in Liberty Township. On August 25th of that year, during the first Court of Quarter Session for Trumbull County, Camden was appointed as a judge, along with John Young of Youngstown, Turhand Kirtland of Poland, James Kingsbury of Cleveland, and Eliphant Austin of Austinburg (at this time, Trumbull County encompassed the entirety of the Western Reserve).
Making a trip back to Connecticut in 1801 for his wife and her family, Cleaveland returned to Liberty, where he would remain until 1814, when he relocated to Youngstown. An early school teacher there and grist mill owner, Cleaveland died in Youngstown on March 13th, 1826, aged 47, having lived his adult life in the region his older brother helped establish.
Asahel Adams
Buried next to his wife and two children who predeceased him eight years earlier, Asahel Adams’ grave is topped by a brownstone marker carved by Cornelius Ferris of Cuyahoga County, inscribed with the epitaph “Vain is the studied phrase/The force of word/To speak thy loss. (Photo by the author)
“Gentlemen, hold your fire, don’t fire until they do so first” instructed Capt. John Parker as the massive column of British troops filed upon the green in Lexington, Massachuttes. April 19th, 1775 was the date, and just as the strains of “The British Grenadiers” died down, a shot was fired. To this day, nobody knows by who––but when the smoke cleared, 49 colonists lay dead between both Lexington and the neighboring town of Concord, and the world fundamentally changed.
Three years later, on May 5th, 1777, Asahel Adams of Canterbury, Windham County, Connecticut, then a lad of 23 answered the call to serve in the Seventh Regiment of the Connecticut Line, one of the nine regiments of troops from Connecticut within the Continental Army. Enlisting as a private, Adams saw some of the most dire days of the Revolution, serving alongside General Washington at Valley Forge, where the Continental Army was encamped from December 1777 until June 1778, and emerged a disciplined fighting force under the direction of Prussian general Baron Von Stuben. A subsequent veteran of the Battle of Monmouth, the last battle of the Philadelphia campaign, and the Battle of Rhode Island, Adams served until May 5th, 1781, exactly five years to the day when he enlisted, mustering out with an honorable discharge.
Following the war, Adams removed to Norwich, New London County, Connecticut, his wife Olive’s
hometown, where he is recorded as being an Excellent Scribe of the Franklin Chapter of Royal Arch
Masons. On November 17th, 1795, “five square miles and three tracts of land” were transferred from the
Connecticut Land Company to Asahel, his brother Jabez, Moses Cleaveland, and “three others” in what is
presently Liberty Township. The only one of these men to claim their holdings, in 1802 Asahel,
his wife Olive, and eight children departed Norwich for Liberty Township, settling here the same year.
Unfortunately, life was not without its trials and tribulations here in Liberty, as in April 1813, two of
Asahel’s children, Olive, aged eighteen, and Mason, aged twenty, passed away on the same day, followed
by his wife ten days later. History does not record their causes of death, but given the rapid succession,
disease can likely be inferred as the cause. Eight years later, on May 25th, 1821, Asahel Adams would
join his wife and children in death at the age of sixty-six, buried at what is now the Girard-Liberty Union
Cemetery beneath a brownstone marker attributed to Cornelius Ferris of Newburgh, Cuyahoga County.
Henry Barnhisel Sr.
Passing away on October 21st, 1824 at 47 years old, Henry was interred upon the land he deeded for the Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery beneath a simple mudstone marker carved by unknown hands. (Photo by the author)
The donor of the land on which the Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery currently sits, Henry Barnhisel Sr., was born on October 18, 1776, in Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Of German extraction, his grandfather, Johann Valentine Berndhisel, a butcher from Worms, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, around 1728. Much like his grandfather, Henry, too, would uproot and leave his homeland as a young adult. In 1811, he sold his land in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, for land in Trumbull County, relocating to Liberty Township that same year.
Two years later, in 1813, he acquired 318 acres from the Connecticut Land Company and constructed a frame house along what is now State Route 422—a structure that later formed the rear ell of the Barnhisel House, expanded by his son, Henry Jr., in 1840. Selling parcels of land to settlers for one dollar each, he reserved a tract north of his residence for a burying ground, which would later become Girard-Liberty Union Cemetery.
DISCLAIMER: To preserve the headstones on this tour for future generations, please refrain from making grave rubbings or any other physical contact with the stones, including touching, leaning, or resting. Not only can these actions cause damage, but they may also destabilize the headstones.
As with any cemetery, please be respectful to those who rest here and conduct yourself in an appropriate manner. Photography is welcomed and encouraged—”Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints.”
