The Adams Street Cemetery Project is a collaborative research-based community service project involving Baldwin-Wallace faculty members, students, and professional historians from the Berea Historical Society, and City of Berea personnel. We are working together to rediscover the lost histories of those buried in the Adams Street Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Berea.
This cemetery has a troubled history. Its earliest burials date from 1834, two years before Berea was founded. It functioned as Berea's main cemetery through the nineteenth century. At one time, twenty-one Civil War veterans were buried there. However, in 1886, the Cleveland Stone Co. bought the locally-owned quarries adjacent to the cemetery, where Coe Lake is now. Quarrying activities had already caused flooding and landslides throughout the area, and even undermined the foundations of the local Methodist church. A local urban legend says that the Cleveland Stone Co. quarry operated too close to the edge of the cemetery, causing a landslide in its northwest corner that exposed some graves. Worried families moved their loved ones to other cemeteries, including five of the Civil War veterans.
The cemetery continued to accept burials, including that of a World War I veteran. But in the 1930s, the cemetery was neglected. In 1930, vandals devastated it, knocking over many of the tombstones. By 1934, weeds and grass covered many of the graves.
In recent years, the City of Berea has maintained the cemetery, building a fence around it. The American Legion Post 91 has decorated veterans' graves. But in 2001, the only person who knew where veterans were buried died, leaving no records. The City of Berea discovered that its records of burials were incomplete, and called upon the Baldwin-Wallace College History Department to help map the cemetery and locate graves.
BW students have done important work on this project, learning research skills and methods by doing professional historical research. Students have located the current grave sites of all twenty-two veterans, and have arranged for damaged grave markers to be replaced. They have helped families locate their ancestors' graves. Students also arranged for a ground-penetrating radar scan of the cemetery, which located 116 unmarked burials and confirmed that there had been a landslide in the northwest corner of the cemetery. Students even handled public relations for the project, doing interviews for Pursuit, the News-Sun, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Channel 5 News. Right now, students are mapping the known graves, researching the life stories of the dead for a "walking tour" booklet and a collaborative book on Berea cemeteries, designing an interpretive exhibit on the cemetery for the Berea Historical Society, and planning an online interactive map that will allow the public to access our extensive database of genealogical and biographical information. Some students even plan to write a play that will tell Berea's history through the stories of those buried in the cemetery.
You can help. There are mysteries yet to be solved. Did the quarrying really desecrate graves? Who is buried in the unmarked graves? Are there burials outside the current fence? Why is one record of a burial marked "scissors"? How did all these people live, and die? Help us restore their past, and their dignity. Help us restore Berea's history.
If you are interested in participating or supporting the project, contact the Chair of the History Department, Dr. Indira Gesink, at 440-826-2280 or igesink@bw.edu. Students may earn course credit for participation through the independent study program, through Faculty-Student Collaborative Scholarship, through internships, or by registering for HIS 100 Methods and Materials. Students from all disciplines are welcome to participate.
275 Eastland Rd.