LIBERTY TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Begins an account from the Mahoning Vindicator published June 21, 1870, “One place was more than usually lively on Friday and Saturday last. We had a dog fight on Friday, and on Saturday, the usual outgrowth from a dog fight: namely, a fight between men.”
The Saturday match featured a local tough by the name of Neil Mullen and an unnamed “Scotchman” in a prearranged donnybrook at Church Hill in Liberty Township. Both were miners, and for five rounds they unleashed their fury upon one another with rules guided by “dog principles.”
After the fifth round, his thumb in pieces, the Scotchman “threw up the sponge” and conceded the fight. If there was any consolation, his opponent, known to be a “very quarrelsome fellow,” went down early in his next bout against an Edward Jones, who gave him a “very handsome whipping,” according to the newspaper account.
Soundly beaten and his hand stinging from the fight, the unnamed Scotchman left for his home approximately 1 mile to the east – in the small hamlet of Seceder Corners.
By the late 19th century, the community of Seceder Corners was a rough and tumble haven for miners and farmers. Others who lived here worked in other early – and dangerous – industrial pursuits, as told in a Sept. 11, 1896, edition of the Vindicator. This story gave an update on the Ohio Powder Co., where on three different occasions “explosions have occurred, and each time two men were killed.” Ohio Powder, the article continues, is located “only a short distance from the village of Seceder Corners,” where “a number” of the workers reside.
You wouldn’t know it today. This junction at state Route 304 and Logan Way in Liberty Township is unassuming and doesn’t stand out from the many small commercial nodes across the Mahoning Valley.
Yet these crossroads represent a rich, poignant place in the history of Trumbull County. Here, a band of the township’s earliest settlers – driven predominantly by religious intention – established Seceder Corners in 1803, so named because they represented a seceder faction of the Associated Reformed Presbyterians.
The congregation, mostly comprised of Scots Irish from western Pennsylvania, secured from James Applegate a pleasant tract of land atop a hill. Here, they established a small church – first a tent, then a log house. At the same time, the settlers plotted the parameters for a new cemetery.
This cemetery – Seceder Corners Cemetery – still stands today. Among those buried here are founders such as Applegate, born May 31, 1765, in Monmouth County, N.J., says Gavin Esposito, a photographer from Hubbard and history major at Youngstown State University. Esposito, who also writes for the Trumbull County Tourism Bureau’s blog, “Truly Trumbull,” has researched and photographed cemeteries across northeastern Ohio, including Seceder Corners.
At the age of 15, Applegate enlisted as a ranger in Capt. Henry Rush’s battalion, where he served between 1780 and 1783, Esposito says. “After the war, he received a land grant in Bedford,” he says, and then relocated to Westmoreland and Allegheny counties in Pennsylvania. In May of 1800 Applegate purchased 600 acres from Camden Cleaveland – brother of the Connecticut Land Co.’s Moses Cleaveland – in southern Liberty Township for an undisclosed amount. “Part of this was the land where Seceder Corners is today,” Esposito says.
Some of these headstones and grave markers date back more than 200 years. Applegate, for example, died June 24, 1820, at age 55. His stone is smothered with lichen and its inscription mostly washed away. Nonetheless, a close-up look reveals that stone is Applegate’s.
(Photo by Gavin Esposito)
Esposito says many of the memorials in the cemetery are made of mudstone, a substance similar to sandstone. Over the centuries, these markers have become vulnerable to fungi, algae and other natural growth that have damaged or erased many of the epitaphs.
Still, many of these survive to tell a story, Esposito says. Take, for example, the stone of James Ray, who died on March 24, 1824, at age 34, from a horse accident, now memorialized in a couplet. “A fateal [sic] fall from a horse/In death did he end his days/Oh man prepare to meet your god/He’s just in all his ways.” Ray first settled in Mantua with his family before setting off on his own. He had been living in Liberty Township as early as 1818, according to marriage records Esposito discovered.
Others buried at the cemetery include an Irish immigrant by the name of John Milligan, who died in 1839 at age 53, and whose epitaph reads as part homage to his homeland. “Far from their native land/ Lay far from Erin’s strand/Here their bodies lay beneath the sand.”
Esposito’s research has found that some interred at Seceder Corners had direct connections to important religious movements during the 19th century, such as Erastus Cowdery of Youngstown, a brother to an early leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. Cowdery’s brother, Oliver, in 1828 became a confidant of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith. Oliver Cowdery was one of the Three Witnesses to the Mormon plates, helped to oversee publication of the Book of Mormon, and in 1830 became a founding member of the church.
Erastus remained a staunch Presbyterian, but his brother Oliver most likely visited him on occasions, Esposito says. Erastus died in 1833 at age 36.
“The cemetery lists 602 memorials at the site,” Esposito says. An inventory conducted in 1939 shows that the cemetery includes six graves from veterans of the War for American Independence; another 34 marking those who served during the War of 1812; seven from the Mexican-American War; and 14 Civil War veterans.
By the mid-19th century, factions of the Presbyterian Church had once again united and constructed a more permanent structure at the site. Today, the church is no longer a Presbyterian congregation.
Meanwhile, the old cemetery stands sentinel on the hill, staring down at modern day Seceder Corners. A used car lot is situated across the street along Route 304. On the northeast and southeast corners, two small strip plazas and a drive-thru dominate the intersection, while on the southwest corner, patrons pump gas into their vehicles at a Shell service station.
“I’ve always loved history,” Esposito says, noting both of his grandfathers have degrees in history while his mother earned her degree in anthropology. “It was a seed that was planted in me from a very young age.”
Pictured at top: Gavin Esposito kneels next to the headstone of James Applegate, who is buried at Seceder Corners Cemetery.