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Couple takes interest in abandoned North Side cemetery
YOUNGSTOWN
Inaccurate records have led a Boardman couple to a forgotten cemetery in an abandoned lot near what now is known as Harvard Street on the city’s North Side.
Lou and Sally Joseph of Boardman have dedicated much of their lives to putting together records of the dead.
“It’s interesting looking up your ancestors and what they did and how they lived,” Lou Joseph said.
Now, in retirement, it serves as a hobby, which turned personal once the Josephs found a lost relative, Gertrude Cleckner, Sally Joseph’s maternal great-grandmother, somehow lost in a mix concerning the city and the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.
While documenting several volumes of the dead in Calvary Cemetery on South Belle Vista Avenue, Lou Joseph said many in the cemetery had been moved from other cemeteries. This led him down another search to properly document each burial place, allowing loved ones to easily trace their departed.
“You would be surprised how many dead people move around,” Sally Joseph said.
Cleckner came from Germany in the 1800s. She was married to Peter Gillis, and they had two children. In 1924, Cleckner, 48, of Parker Street, Youngstown, died of self-inflicted injuries.
Cleckner was buried in the Old German Catholic Cemetery at Brier Hill (part of Tod Homestead Cemetery, now an abandoned plot of overgrown land on the corner of Wick and Rayen avenues). St. Joseph’s Church of Youngstown sat at this location, which now belongs to Antioch Baptist Church, according to the Mahoning County auditor’s records.
When St. Joseph’s Church was torn down in the early 1900s, most bodies were moved to other cemeteries – but not all.
Lou Joseph said he believes the bodies remain at the site, because of no records to trace them after their burials at Wick and Rayen.
The cause, he said, originally was money-related.
Those who could afford it paid to have the bodies moved, and there is no record of a cemetery transfer for those who didn’t have the money.
“The rest are still there because families didn’t have the money to move them,” he said. “At the time, the family didn’t have money to move them to Calvary [Cemetery] like the rest so they [the diocese] didn’t move them. ... There are close to a thousand people still there.”
While searching the site, various Harvard Street-area neighbors came out to talk about the famous abandoned cemetery they had lived by for so many years.
One neighbor, a veteran who wished to remain anonymous, said he was looking into buying surrounding property and eventually buying the famous cemetery land from the diocese.
He said he has put in a request to the diocese to “finish their responsibility” with the bodies before he will make any moves on the land.
Another neighbor said “the cemetery hill” was always there – ever since she could remember.
“I thought the Catholics were supposed to take care of the dead,” Sally Joseph said.
When Lou Joseph requested to see records of Cleckner’s burial information, the diocese refused to let him look at them.
A representative from the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown said she had no information on any cemetery from that era and did not wish to look into the matter. She also refused to give her name and, despite several attempts by The Vindicator, no further contact could be made.
Chelsea Hess, Mahoning Valley Historical Society archives assistant, despite what Calvary records show, had a record that all graves from St. Joseph’s Cemetery were moved to Oakhill Cemetery.
According to Ohio cemetery laws, the township or city in which an abandoned cemetery resides is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the abandoned lot.
Youngstown Law Director Martin Hume said he would have to fully investigate the land to give an opinion as to whose legal responsibility the unmoved and unmaintained graves are.
Lou Joseph said regardless of responsibility, he would like to just see the land and the dead taken care of.
“You can tell a lot about a town or a city by how they take care of their dead,” he said.
“We are just concerned about the resting place of people and want to ensure it’s properly taken care of,” said Stacey Adger, Mahoning County Genealogical Society trustee.