When I saw the rendering of the impressive 31-story building that will rise just to the east of the city’s North Market in Saturday’s Columbus Dispatch, my first thought was of the long-time “residents” of that block. This seemed like something they wouldn’t take lying down.
Sorry for my feeble attempt at humor, but I couldn’t resist. You see, the “residents” I speak of are the remains of some of Columbus’ earliest settlers, some of whom are still believed to be buried in the area that was once the North Graveyard. If ghosts exist, these lost souls truly have good reasons for hauntings.
That is no joke, even if it sounds like one. Rather than allowing myself to be dragged into a comedy act of my own making, I’m going to revisit my own explanation that leads the Short North chapter in A Historical Guidebook to Old Columbus that was published in 2012:
“While visitors stroll through the North Market sampling chocolates, sizing up fresh produce, and enjoying a fine pastry with their cup of cappuccino, most probably aren’t aware that some of the city’s pioneers may be sleeping beneath their feet.
“The market occupies the northwest corner of the city’s first graveyard, and some of the bodies that were supposed to have been moved to Green Lawn Cemetery in the 1870s and 1880s obviously weren’t. They are still down there, lost to time except during those rare moments when a construction crew starts digging and puts a spade into some poor soul’s final resting place. When that happens, as it did in 2001 and again in 2004, there is suddenly a lot of hand-wringing over how this could have happened.
“When you’re walking in the North Market, you’re one or two feet above people’s faces,’” said archaeologist Ryan Weller, whose Grandview firm (Weller and Associates) did the excavation work for both of those digs.”
At the time, Weller went on to explain that thirty-seven sets of remains were found during those two digs at varying heights, in part because the area wasn’t level and in part because the ground has been filled in and leveled for numerous construction projects over the years.
“The part of it behind Barley’s (Brewing Company) on High Street, [the remains] tend to be four to five feet deep,” he said. “Under some of the sidewalks, they are two to three feet down. They are much shallower near the North Market.”
At one time Weller estimated that there were still at least two hundred burials (about 16 percent of the graveyard’s population) within the four-block area of the old cemetery, which was bordered on the east by North High Street, by Spruce Street on the south, and Park on the west. The north border ran at approximately 401 North High.
You can see some of the tombstones that used to stand here out at Green Lawn Cemetery, but sometimes the grave marker apparently made the move without the body that lay beneath it. Those who remain in the vicinity of the North Market may get a wakeup call when the construction on the new tower begins this spring or summer, and if they do, they may get to take the same belated trip to Green Lawn that others did the last time this happened.
John Kerr, Columbus’ second mayor and one of the new capital city’s proprietors, could be one of those – or his bones may have made the trip to Green Lawn already. He was buried at the North Cemetery when he died in 1823, but by the time the bodies were moved across town, his surviving relatives didn’t know precisely where he was buried. The final work of clearing the so-called Kerr tract (he donated land for the graveyard) was completed in December, 1881, almost sixty years after he passed. The remains of 867 bodies, over half of them children, were supposedly removed to Green Lawn at that time.
Wherever he lies, Kerr would probably be amazed to see the gargantuan tower that is going to be built there and proud to see how huge his town has become.
I’m also guessing that he would be disappointed that his city’s modern residents have so little respect for the final resting places of the dead.
