DAMASCUS CEMETERY Remains of 118 Quakers to get new resting place

Three historical markers will be dedicated.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
DAMASCUS -- The remains of a Revolutionary War veteran who traveled with Daniel Boone are among those to be reinterred Sunday at the Damascus Cemetery.
In ceremonies beginning at 3:30 p.m., church and community members will dedicate three Ohio historical markers, and reinter remains from the Friends Burying Grounds near the Damascus Friends Church.
The first historical plaque to be unveiled will mark the site of the Friends Burying Grounds.
Dr. John White, professor of anthropology at Youngstown State University, and a group of YSU students and community volunteers spent the spring and summer months this year and in 2001 carefully unearthing and cataloging the cemetery's remains.
Clarence Sekerak of the church said the people buried beside the church from 1787-1843 were members of the church and their children. He said the current congregation has been planning since the 1970s to move the cemetery to make room for future expansion, and they finally did so under White's direction.
White said the volunteers and students worked carefully since the nearly 200-year-old remains were fragile and difficult to distinguish from the surrounding clay soil.
Burial method
He said the Quakers often buried their dead by wrapping them in shrouds rather than clothing them. They were then placed in simple pine boxes without handles or ornamentation.
White said because of that method of burial, the only artifacts found were nails and hinges from the coffins and about a dozen buttons.
White said the graves were arranged in rows and the dead buried in the order they died, rather than in family plots. Because they lived a simple lifestyle, they did not mark the individual graves, but the congregation faithfully kept death records, he said.
Sekerak said after a ceremony near the church, two markers will be placed at the Damascus Cemetery just east of the church.
One marker will be placed at the site where the 118 remains from the Friends Burying Grounds will be reinterred. The remains will be placed in a mass grave and a plaque will list the 118 names and the dates of each person's birth and death, he said.
Revolutionary War veteran
Ann Jones Cobbs of Winona is the great-great granddaughter of Catlit Jones Sr., whose remains are among those to be reinterred.
She said he was a Revolutionary War veteran who traveled to Kentucky with Daniel Boone and was among 21 men who helped Boone rescue his daughter who had been captured by Indians.
He moved to Ohio and settled on Valley Road south of Damascus. The land remained in the family until recently, Cobbs said.
She said Jones became a Quaker minister, riding on horseback to various churches to preach, and may have been the church's first minister.
The other marker at the Damascus Cemetery will mark the site where an unknown number of remains of slaves and freed slaves and their family members were buried in 1914, having been moved from a private cemetery in Knox Township.
Sekerak said the cemetery was on land owned by Samuel Coppock of the Damascus church in the 1830s and was maintained by church members.
tullis@vindy.com