Alexander Harper Memorial Cemetery in Harpersfield, Ohio

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Get directions Harpersfield, Ohio, USA

Coordinates: 41.77908, -81.00144
Cemetery ID:

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The cemetery is located at the southeast corner of Highway 84 and County Line Road. Mildred Steed wrote of this cemetery and Captain Alexander Harper (1744-1798) on page 109 of Soldiers and Widows of the American Revolution [published by New Connecticut Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, Painesville, Ohio 1985]: "One day while traversing the tractless forest of his land (where Unionville now stands), he noticed a spot which was higher and more sandy than the rest and marked this portion of his land for their cemetery, little knowing that he would be the first to be buried there. In this historic cemetery at the corner of Route 84 and County Line Road in the Village of Unionville, lie the remains of many of the old settlers buried in the nineteenth century. In the hardships and exposure connected with the clearing of his land and the improvement of a new country, he contracted malaria and died September 10, 1798 about three months after his arrival and was buried in his cemetery in a coffin hewn from a log. The grave being dated 1798 is the oldest authentic burial on the Western Reserve. The ode on the slab reads: 'Around this monumental stone, Let friendship drop a sacred tear. A husband kind, a parent fond, An upright man lies buried here.'"

The cemetery was initially referred to as the Old Unionville Cemetery, but over time, as it expanded it became known as the Alexander Harper Memorial Cemetery. Old Unionville is now the old section of the Alexander Harper Memorial Cemetery.