By GLEN WERLING
Ossian residents Larry and Dave Heckber made a request to the members of the Jefferson Township Advisory Board Saturday afternoon.
They want to clean up the Old Ossian Cemetery. Their great-grandmother is buried there.
Located off the end of Young Street on the near south side of Ossian, the cemetery has not seen any new graves in many years. The Township Advisory Board pays Grahm Smith to keep the cemetery mowed, and Township Trustee Barry Gordon noted that Smith, “does a very good job.”
“He kind of suffers through it, though, when he mows,” quipped Gordon, observing that the terrain is very uneven from the many pine box graves that have rotted away over the years, causing the ground to sink where those graves are located.
Heckber acknowledged that the cleanup will be a three-to-four-year project, especially since most of the work will have to be done by volunteers. However he has already laid the groundwork for launching the restoration by partnering with rural Ossian residents Terry and Annie Hoffmeier and Jerri Lehman, who Heckber said are educated and experienced on grave restoration and restoring old cemeteries.
Since the advisory board members are responsible for the maintenance of the cemetery, the Heckbers were seeking permission to:
• Delineate the boundaries of the cemetery.
• Remove the brush and dead trees as well as some of the live trees — in particular two walnut trees — from the cemetery.
• Sell any good wood that is harvested — if there is any — and use any potential proceeds from the sale toward the restoration project.
• Restore as many gravestones as possible.
• Fill in the many divots created by years of soil settling over plots.
• Replace the sign marking the cemetery.
Lehman also recommended that the township seek an annual grant of $500 offered by the Wells County Foundation toward the upkeep of the cemetery.
She added that through her contacts with the state, she would like to seek naming the cemetery as a historical site and then post a historical marker.
Gordon expressed concerns about protecting the township from being liable should a volunteer become injured during the restoration process. Lehman recommended that the township contact an attorney to draw up a paper that volunteers could sign waiving the township’s liability.
By cross-referencing five different sources, Larry Heckber has learned there are as many as 176 people that are buried at The Old Ossian Cemetery including 12 Civil War veterans.
Some of the sources are less than reliable, he added, as he knew at least one of the people who was listed as buried in the cemetery was actually buried in nearby Oak Lawn Cemetery.
Gordon surmised that The Old Ossian Cemetery is so old that there may also be some Native Americans buried there as well.
He added that he will pledge $500 of his personal funds toward the restoration project.
“I think if maybe if we publish names of people who are in the cemetery there may be people who would be willing to step forward and donate toward the project,” Larry Heckber added.
Lehman added that she was checking into grants from the state that could assist in funding the restoration.
After further discussion, trustees Lloyd Meyer and Dan Rupright agreed to seek bids from at least three different tree services for the removal of trees and brush — once it determined by the Heckber family and the trustees which trees should be removed.
“It will take a long ways to get there,” said advisory board member Tim Baker, who attended the meeting by cell phone, but he added, “Let’s just do this a little bit at a time.”
Terry Hoffmeier added, “It’ll take a lot of elbow grease, a shovel and spade.” It will also be difficult to return all of the gravestones to the plots where they belong. An ultrasound could be used to determine where the graves are, but determining exactly who each grave belongs to will be a challenge, he added, since many of the stones have been removed.
Gordon affirmed that there should be township funds that could be used to aid in the restoration of the cemetery, which is a little more than two acres in size.
Rupright, Gordon and Heckber plan to meet and walk the cemetery to see what trees stay and what will go.
“It’s taken a long time to start this project but I think we’ve got the right people to get this job done,” Larry Heckber said.
In other business, the township trustees reviewed with Gordon the 2021 budget.
The total expenses for 2021 were $129,283 while $137,000 was budgeted.
“We brought in more money than we spent and we spent less money than we had budgeted,” Gordon explained.
The trustees also spoke of the necessity of getting the new township fire pumper serviced and of protecting and selling the township’s rescue vehicle once it is replaced by the county with a new rescue vehicle.
Baker requested Gordon provide the trustees with a list of the township assets which the trustees plan to review at their next meeting Feb. 24.
The trustees also reorganized, keeping Rupright as president and Meyer as secretary.
Rupright had recommended that Baker assume the duties of president as Rupright does not plan to seek re-election. Baker pointed out that Rupright is still a trustee until the end of the year and he might as well fill out his term on the board as president since he has done a good job at it.
glenw@news-banner.com
