DEFIANCE COUNTY, Ohio — A historic cemetery from the mid-1800s was recently rediscovered in Defiance County and because of the work that went into confirming its location, it will soon receive recognition for its importance.
If you drive through Highland Township on Bowman Road about 10 minutes south of the city of Defiance, you would never realize you were driving past a piece of northwest Ohio history.
It's why researchers at the Defiance Public Library and Defiance College have been working to fix that and spread knowledge of its historical significance as the final resting place for dozens of freed slaves.
"You know, you have this freed Black man who came up, owned many acres of land here in Defiance County, created his own community, there was a church on the site," Renee Hopper, adult, teen and technical supervisor at the Defiance Public Library, said.
In 1855, Archibald Worthington began burying fellow freed slaves on his property in Highland Township. The Worthington Cemetery was the only all-Black cemetery in Defiance County and was forgotten for years.
"These were freed slaves that migrated up to the North. Ohio was a natural state for them to come up to," Sarah Marshall, DPLS adult services associate, said. "And they worked here, they owned land here and they had their own little community out there."
Worthington eventually moved to Wilmington in 1890 and after multiple changes in ownership over the decades, knowledge of those buried in the cemetery was literally tossed aside to make way for farming.
"So they did what was easiest and they first moved the stones to the edge of the field, and then they were eventually lost altogether," Marshall said.
Then the current owners of the property, Ayersville Sewer and Water, began a project to install a lagoon at the site until an area farmer brought up some word-of-mouth information.
"He said 'I remember my grandpa saying I think there was a cemetery in that field,'" Marshall said.
So beginning in 2020, researchers with the Defiance Library, Defiance College and the University of Pennsylvania surveyed the area with trained K9s and ground penetrating radar and confirmed with historical records that this was the site of the nearly-forgotten Worthington cemetery.
It's estimated up to 50 people are buried here, but there are no records to confirm their identities.
Now, the project has been approved to receive an Ohio Historical Marker to acknowledge the part of the region's history that had been lost for more than a century.
"We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those past people, those past circumstances, and we want to keep those fresh in everybody's mind," Hopper said. "For me, that's what made this real. These people are buried there, no one knew about it, and now we're bringing that recognition back."
You can read through the entire research process on the Defiance Public Library's blog.
The Defiance Library will help draft the language for the marker, which is expected to take up to a year and a half the be installed.