Clark Cemetery Holds Many Secrets

From the Progress of Oct. 30, 1996. By Dortha Schaefer, Feature Writer. Material for this article was provided by George Price.

IN THE MID 1800s, Paulding County was still a part of the Black Swamp; mosquitoes, frogs and crawdads lived in the area and few people had as yet come into the area.

Those who did come in were hardy pioneer souls and men from Canada who worked to take down our magnificent white oak trees. Most of the men seem to have been French, but some may have hailed from Germany.

George Price of Paulding owns one of the houses from those by-gone days and has remodeled it to be as modern as anyone could ask. George’s ancestors brought the two farm acres on Route 111, and made one house. In later years, while the remodeling was going on, coins fell out while workmen were taking down old horsehair plaster from the walls.

The coins are larger than quarters and bear such dates as 1771 (a German coin), 1837, 1843, and 1847. It is presumed that some of those workers must have stayed for a time in one of the cabins, leaving money behind. Most are French coins.

The oak trees were of enormous size, were felled and cleaned and sent down the creek and from there on to England to be made into ship timbers. A saw mill was built and used during those early days of the county on a farm north of Antwerp on the Marie DeLarme Creek.

Just off SR 49, also north of Antwerp, is an ancient cemetery which is known as the Clark Cemetery. At the time of the cutting of the oaks there was a camp at that site where the Canadian workers lived. A few of the giant white oaks are still there.

A common burial area surrounded by falling-down fence marks the spot where many of the foreign workers were interred. It happened during an epidemic of ague and other fevers spread by the ample mosquito population.

Tombstones are showing their age but many names can still be read of those buried in the quiet spot just off the busy highway, names such as Donat, Hart, Banks, Munger, Hoover, and Schooley.

The most thought-provoking spot in the ancient burial ground is the common grave of those long-ago workers who left their own country to come to a forbidding foreign land to work for only pennies a day. To die so far from families and homes was a sad fate.

The Great Black Swamp covered about 1,500 square miles.