6-foot sign now IDs forgotten graveyard at Tod cemetery

YOUNGSTOWN

A 6-foot-tall cast aluminum sign now stands along a pathway leading to the graves of more than 1,800 once-forgotten ancestors.

That graveyard, known as a potter’s field or the Youngstown Township Cemetery, served as the final resting place for hundreds of poor and unidentifiable residents who died between 1911 and 1933. It lies adjacent to the stately Tod Homestead Cemetery along Belmont Avenue.

For almost 100 years, overgrowth overtook the area, and without grave markers and proper communication of its existence, it disappeared into the background of a normally pristine cemetery.

A phone call from Rocky Falleti, president of the Archaeological Society of Ohio Mahoning Valley Chapter, to The Vindicator’s office was the first push initiating a domino effect to recognizing those buried under not only the earth, but also under decades of confusion and obfuscation.

Sallie Tod Dutton, association president and descendant of Tod Homestead’s namesake family who included Civil War-era Ohio Gov. David Tod, said she was disheartened by the lack of knowledge about so many people buried on land she oversees, but took action immediately to right the wrong done for so many years.

Dutton said great care was put into choosing the best way to memorialize so many people in the hidden graveyard.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.