Valley's movers, shakers detailed on Oak Hill Cemetery tours today

YOUNGSTOWN

Those who visit Oak Hill Cemetery could easily notice that David Tod is buried at the top of a hill - a symbolic gesture of his prominent standing in the Mahoning Valley.

“He helped unify the extreme views on slavery. He took a centrist position on the [Civil] war,” during a time when Ohio was split on those issues, Frank Rulli said about Tod, who also served as Ohio’s governor from 1862 to ‘64.

Tod was among the area’s early movers and shakers who were discussed during a Saturday afternoon tour of the cemetery, 344 Oak Hill Ave., on the South Side.

Rulli, a Mahoning Valley Historical Society board member and volunteer, conducted one of several 90-minute tours through the vast graveyard. About 40 people joined him, despite a chilly, persistent drizzle, to hear about the lives of some of the Valley’s best-known industrialists, settlers and developers.

John Young, a surveyor and Whitestown, N.Y., native who was perhaps best known as Youngstown’s founder, surveyed the region in the mid-1790s. On Feb. 9, 1797, he bought the 15,000-acre township from the Western Reserve Land Co. for about $16,000, several years before the establishment of Youngstown was officially recorded in 1802, Rulli noted.

One of the men who associated with Young was Col. James Hillman, who joined the Revolutionary Army and may have fought in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Rulli added.

After the three-week battle, Hillman and his father became tradesmen who settled in the Pittsburgh area and traveled along the Mahoning River to Lake Erie, he noted.

“Hillman met John Young, who convinced him to settle here with the promise of six acres,” said Rulli, adding that Hillman also was the Trumbull County sheriff, a state legislature, and a tax collector.

Read more about the them and others buried at Oak Hill in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.