Place:Canfield Cemetery, Canfield, Mahoning, Ohio, United States

History

For more than two centuries, this burial ground has been a final resting place for those individuals whose lives represented the community history of Canfield. The earliest existing tombstone marks the death of Huldah Tanner in 1803. Seven earlier deaths in Canfield Township are recorded from 1798 to 1803, but the gravesites are unknown. Elijah and Rhoda Hopkins Wadsworth formally deeded the cemetery to the citizens of Canfield in 1810 with a first edition of land donated by Matthew B. Whittlesey in 1811. In 1862-1863, the graveyard was again enlarged. For seventy years the cemetery and fencing were maintained on a volunteer basis. When the Village of Canfield was incorporated in 1869, the care and management was vested in a board of trustees.

Many pioneer families, including those who served with distinction in civil and military roles, occupy final resting places in this Canfield cemetery. Honored individuals include three of the seven original stockholders of the Connecticut Land Company who first owned this Western Reserve township. These veterans of the Revolutionary War are Judson Canfield, respected lawyer and local surveyor for whom the township is named; James Johnston, the proprietor of Johnston Township and also a veteran of the War of 1812; and Elijah Wadsworth, served in the War of 1812 as Major General of the 4th Division of the Ohio Militia. As written by poet William Cullen Bryant, "The leaves of the Oak and the Willow shall fade, be scattered around and together be laid; and the old and the young, and the low and the high, shall molder to dust and together shall lie."

(Source: Ohio Historical Society marker)

Location

25 Elizabeth Place, Canfield, Mahoning county, Ohio, United States

Resources

• Billion Graves: Canfield Cemetery
• Find A Grave: Canfield Cemetery