Time, neglect, etc. take a toll on Likens Cemetery

Likens Cemetery, Marion Township, Marion County, Ohio, April 1942

The picture above is of Likens Cemetery, also known as Likens Chapel Cemetery, sometimes known as "Lykens Chapel Cemetery" in Marion Township, Marion County, Ohio.  It is located about 500 feet south of Likens Road, and about 1,500 feet west of the intersection of where Pole Lane intersects Likens Road.   I have family there.

Originally a cemetery for the Zuck Family, it grew and was added onto over the years and at one time served the families of Likens Chapel, one of four Methodist Episcopal chapels on a circuit ridden by Rev. Jeremiah Crabb Monnett.  Around WWI, the frame structure was replaced with a brick building still at the corner of Pole Lane and Likens Road.

By March 1, 1942 there were more than 300 burials at Likens, all with some type of marker.  In 1976, there were only 130 markers.

What happened?

In March, 1942, the United States Government arrived in Marion County and evicted all landowners in an a roughly 11,000+ acres area for a war effort bomb making facility, the Scioto Ordnance Plant.  Landowners and tenant farmers were given sixty day notices to vacant the land, and owners were paid a marginal amount for their land.  There was a war going on, and many of the farms had grain in storage, livestock and equipment - all of which had to be removed or be forfeited.

My mother's family lost a home built by my great grandparents and 80 acres.  They were lucky.  They could place the smaller farm buildings on skids and pull them across the road to the other eighty acres they owned, which also had a fine farm house on site.  Still the house and big barn was left to rot, a process that continued even after the war when my grandfather bought back the land for more than what the Federal Government paid him just three years before.

But many families left, and never returned.

In the middle of this mess sat Likens Cemetery.  From May 1, 1942 until sometime in 1945-1946, the grounds were off limits to all civilians, save for one day a year when a single bus of security cleared family members were allowed to visit the cemetery each year of the duration.

This picture was taken in April, 1942, by a local Marion photographer.   It is the only image that we have of the cemetery from that pre-war era.

The first year, the bus was packed.  What greeted people was a field of weeds and brambles as the prairie took back what was taken from it for the cemetery.  The second and third years, the bus was less full and the condition of the cemetery continued to deteriorate.

By wars end, the cemetery was made public again, but the burials almost stopped.  Some family members came, dug up the remains of their family members and re-interred them at other, less vulnerable cemeteries.

In 1953 the cemetery was overgrown and in a thicket of weeds and prairie grasses.  My mother said that her mother had said that someone had DDT was sprayed to kill the vegetation, but no one cleaned up the dead and dying twigs, branches and brambles.  By the following year, the over growth began anew.  My grandmother was unable to find her grandparents graves, despite them having substantial markers.  She never tried to visit them again.

In the 1970s, a 4H Club took on a restoration of sorts of what was left.  A white wooden fence was erected around the cemetery.  NaChurs Plant Food built commercial barns next to the cemetery - I remember seeing my great grandparents stone in 1977 when we served dinner at a NaChurs share holders at a meeting, and I remember seeing my great great grandparents marker while walking to the barns where the event was being held.

Today it looks nothing like the picture above.  The grass is cut, the weeds around the stones have been killed with Roundup, and much of what was in the above picture, seems gone. An unknown number of older, broken stones are buried.

There is no map showing were all the burials were.

When the cemetery was walked and read (thank God!) in 1976 by Paul and Barbara Midlam - without whose work much would be lost - their reading was not done in rows, but by alphabet.  So we have the names from 40 years ago, we do not know all of the exact locations.

What is disturbing is not only the deterioration of the marble stones, but the speed at which they are dissolving.  Ten years ago, these stones were still whitish.  Now they are grey, dingy, with mold and mildew eating away at the carvings, the lichens fueled by the aerosolized fertilizers and ammonia sprayed on the fields to allow for no till planting.

And you know what? Ammonia dissolves soft stone, like marble.  Its in the environmental fallout from this soil conservation method.  Its the perfect storm for decay, for mold for mildew.

I am apprehensive about putting this story on the blog.  I do not want to see the cemetery disturbed anymore than it is.  I do NOT want to see people with good intentions going out and spreading chalk and flour over these old stones. DON'T DO IT!

I do not want to see morons who find this post and decide this would be a great place for drinking and playing Spook in the Dark.  (There is a private home immediately east of the grave yard, you have been warned.)

I do want you to to stop and think about what time does to the timeless.

Today, only about about 130 markers remain from the more than 300 that once were there, in the stones and foot stones in this picture exist.  Either because of man-made neglect, or because the ravages of time have taken their toll.

Here's an example at how far the decay has gone:

And today, 2017, this is what has become of the same three stones:

Had I known that I had this picture from 1942, I would have taken a shot from that very spot.  Maybe this July when I go back to Ohio.

So my task to you, even this weekend, take pictures of things in your life that think will last forever.  Have the pictures PROFESSIONALLY developed.  Twenty years from now, or fifty, someone will thank you for the effort.

Placed for the ages, 160 years later, unreadable, Likens Cemetery.