The Hebrew Section of Greenlawn Cemetery in Portsmouth, Ohio, was established in the early 1850s by members of the Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Society and its grounds have served as the final resting place for members of Southern Ohio’s Jewish community for over 170 years.
In 1860, the Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Society transferred ownership of its plots to Beneh Abraham, a Jewish congregation that was incorporated in Portsmouth two years earlier in 1858. It is possible that the Society was composed of two distinct groups, one for men and one for women. An 1864 letter published by Judah Wechsler, who at the time was serving as rabbi of Beneh Abraham, in The Israelite, a Jewish newspaper out of Cincinnati, mentions that Esther Stern was the founder and first president of the local Ladies Benevolent Society.
In 1863, Isaac Weil was laid to rest in the Hebrew Section of Greenlawn, numbering among the first to be buried in the dedicated Jewish section. Approximately 39 other people are buried in the section, with the most recent burial occurring in 2018.
Members from influential Jewish families including the Seidenbach, Elsas, Seeberger, Lehman, Levi, Labold, Mayer and many more are all buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in the Hebrew section. Members from these families founded the Beneh Abraham congregation in Portsmouth and went on to become influential members of the Portsmouth community in their own right.
Note should also be made of those members of the local Jewish community who served during World War II alongside Americans of all backgrounds. At least four people are known. Their names are Morton Atlas, Gershon David, Edward Levi, and David Timmer. In addition, Dr. Sol Asch served with the United States Public Health Service, which, while providing critical services to the United States, is not a branch of the armed forces. Gershon David was a resident of Jackson, Ohio, 37 miles northeast of Portsmouth, and David Timmer lived in Vanceburg, Kentucky 45 miles southwest of Portsmouth. Morton Atlas and Dr. Sol Asch are buried in Portsmouth's Greenlawn Cemetery.
]]>Where Moore's Run exits the river hills of Shawnee State Forest, just off modern-day US Highway 52, near the "100 Mile House," one finds a particularly significant pioneer era graveyard, which dates back to the first decades of the nineteenth-century when this section of the shawnee State Forest was first settled, its forested bottom lands cleared for corn and cattle farms and its soon to be famous hillsides first stripped of stone for masonry projects up and down the river.
Moore’s Run flows into the Ohio near the 100 Mile House, which is recognized as being 100 miles down river from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and 100 miles upriver from Cincinnati. The current structure, a large stone mansion with “37 rooms,” is now a private residence, but in the 1970s and 80s was a popular bed and breakfast, which also operated a restaurant for area residents. The original 100 Mile House built by Joseph Moore, was the first river bottom residence used by steamboat captains as a mileage marker and landmark. According to local lore, the original house, built with local stone, still stands and is located near the Village of Buena Vista, just below Upper Twin Creek on US Highway 52.
The Mitchell-Morrison Cemetery is located on land that once belonged to Joseph Moore and it is with this pioneer that the “Moore’s Run” name originates. The Mitchell and Morrison of the modern-day name reflect the surnames of neighboring settlers and later owners of the original Moore parcel. The cemetery was abandoned in the early twentieth century, when local burials shifted to the cemeteries at nearby McKendree Chapel and Sandy Springs.
In recent years a devastating ice storm hit the forest and graveyard; large trees and broken limbs fell on top of numerous headstones. Here one finds an estimated fifty graves of some of the earliest settlers in Scioto County, including three common pleas court judges: Joseph Moore, David Mitchell, and William Givens. Their stories capture pioneer era life in what became Shawnee State Forest.
Today, the cemetery is surrounded by state owned lands and the Ohio Division of Forestry maintains a trailhead and parking lot here, thus providing public, recreational access to the Shawnee State Forest. Visitors on foot and horseback can access a network of trails that take them deep into a region of the forest known as the Shawnee Backcountry Management Area (“BCMA” or “Backcountry”).
The Ohio Environmental Council has described Moore’s Run and the surrounding BCMA lands as “an ideal candidate for state wilderness designation or, at the least, management for future old-growth habitat characteristics.” If protected by new state-level wilderness legislation, these 8,000 acres would be preserved for recreational and educational use. Once protected from extractive activity, such as commercial logging, mining, drilling, and road building, the additional acreage would double the size of the Shawnee’s “Wilderness Area.”
The Ohio Environmental Council recommendation is for reserving 25 percent of the Shawnee State Forest (some 16,000 acres) as wilderness, leaving some 47,000 acres open to commercial logging activity.
Sources
Evans, Nelson W. A History of Scioto County, Ohio, Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern Ohio (Portsmouth, Ohio, 1902), 73-75.
“A Path to Wilderness in the Shawnee Backcountry,” in “Wilderness Act Turns 50, Ohio Environmental Council (2014). Web. http://www.theoec.org/campaign/part-4-path-wilderness-shawnee-backcountry
]]>The lives of David Gharky and Dr. Thomas Waller are forever intertwined. These two pioneer settlers first made their home at Alexandria, on the West Side of the Scioto's Old Mouth, but when that village's fate became clear, these two men and their families helped lead the exodus of Alexandrians to higher ground in Portsmouth. Gharky and Waller would prosper economically and politically with the move, each coming to hold office in Scioto County's new seat of local government.
Carey’s Run Cemetery, where Gharky and Waller lay buried, has fallen into disrepair - toppled head stones, overgrown grass-covered monuments sunken into the earth; the surrounding ridge, on two sides, recently stripped to the bone in what resembles the scars of a new mountaintop-removal mining project.
Rather than coal, the rock and dirt from the ridgeside was used as fill in the construction of Portsmouth West Middle School. The Carey’s Run side of the ridge, which adjoins the cemetery, descends into a massive automobile junkyard, which runs north alongside the creek.
Settling at Alexandria had not been part of Gharky’s original plan. Born in the city of Stargard in Pomerania, a historically German city in northwestern Poland, a single, twenty-four year old Gharky immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, arriving in October 1796.
After a year working as a cabinet maker on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Gharky headed west for Pittsburgh, where he hoped to make another new start. In October 1799, Gharky, traveling by flatboat, landed at the mouth of the Scioto River, in another attempt at a new beginning. He would now cast his lot with the people of Alexandria.
In June 1801, when Thomas Waller, with his wife Elisabeth McFarlane, and their new born first child, arrived in Alexandria, Gharky had just begun preparations for building a house and workshop on one of the town’s many empty lots. In the Gharkys' and Wallers' minds, Alexandria offered a bright future, an opportunity to achieve their American Dreams.
In 2000, the pioneer doctor's life garnered the attention of author Jerry Holt, who wrote a one-act play, "Thomas Waller." Produced by the Southern Ohio Medical Center in Portsmouth, Holt's imagining included Waller ruminating upon life in Alexandria: "The floods. Ah, the floods. They came in the winter, and with such frequency that our fences, our haystacks, our grains, even our houses were often carried away - just swept along the water. During those first two winters I often saw the water three feet deep in our home. And those winters were bitter cold. And there was sickness. A great deal of sickness. There was so much for a doctor and wife to do."
Waller and Gharky would both eventually move to higher ground in Portsmouth and go onto to help lead the city as it established itself as the Scioto County seat and the Ohio River gateway to the Scioto Valley.
Alexandria would earn the nickname, Hardscrabble, for the meager reward residents wrung from its flooded streets. In 1817, Samuel Brown's Western Gazetter noted the decline had reached a depressing state. "There are fifteen old buildings, and a tavern well supported by the votaries of Bacchus. Indolence and dissipation characterize the inhabitants." As the original settlers left, the village decayed and eventually what had not been carried off would be washed away by the waters of the Scioto and Ohio.
When death came for Dr. Waller and David Gharky, both men chose to have their remains buried near Carey's Run, on a hill overlooking Abandoned Alexandria. When standing in the cemetery, contemplating the lives of these two pioneers, one can't help but wonder whether they shared a memory, a love perhaps, of this hill's view of the Ohio river bottoms and the hills of Kentucky, rolling off into the distance.
Sources:
Samuel R. Brown, "Scioto County" in the Western Gazetteer; Or Emigrant's Directory: Containing a Geographical Description of the Western States and Territories (1817): p. 300.
David Gharky, The Life of David Gharky, as written by himself: Also, a Record of the Gharky Family; ... with his Last Will and Testament (Portsmouth, Ohio: John Gharky, 1852).
Jerry Holt, "Thomas Waller Play," unpublished script (December 2000).
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