New Circleville Cemetery stone honors former slaves

A memorial stone has been placed at Circleville Cemetery to mark the graves of seven unidentified people who are buried there. The seven people were former slaves, it was learned.

Cemetery volunteers Judy and Merlin Arnold and Circleville Cemetery District board members Deb and Harmon Rash and Ryan Childs placed the stone at the cemetery last week.

Other members of the cemetery board include Nikki Rash and Beth Amon. The cemetery is located just south of the town on J Road.

The stone and inscription were donated by Lardner Monuments of Topeka after some research revealed the unmarked graves. 

Judy Arnold said she was going through some of the cemetery’s records when she discovered a sentence confirming the unmarked graves. The sentence is engraved on the marker and includes:

“During the period just after the Civil War, two Free State citizens that to spite their southern neighbors brought seven Negros who died near Topeka and buried them just west of Israel McComas’ first and now McComas graves, but the southern people were in the habit of burying their servants at their feet, so a reversals of the order and they were probably someone else’s beloved servants, did not hurt their feelings.”

Arnold said the sentence also appeared in other historical records in the county, including a March 14, 1935, edition of The Holton Recorder.

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