Cemetery researcher Chris Gerrett has identified about 45 burials made in a section of Fairview Cemetery that cannot be found on any maps. (West Life photo by Kevin Kelley)

Genealogist stumbles onto mystery at Fairview Cemetery
By Kevin Kelley
Fairview Park
Published March 31, 2010

Chris Gerrett, a genealogy researcher who has been conducting research on Fairview Park Cemetery, has come to a startling conclusion about the graveyard, located on Lorain Road near West 196th Street.

Part of it is missing.

Gerrett, a Fairview Park resident and cemetery restoration specialist, estimates she’s spent about 2,000 hours researching the cemetery. During that research, she’s come across records of individuals buried in section I of the cemetery.

The problem is, none of the maps of the cemetery show section I.

About 45 persons were buried in section I between 1889 and 1905. The earliest map of the cemetery Gerrett has found is from 1916. The question is what happened to section I between 1905 and 1916.

Unlike other sections, which have several people with the same family name, section I includes a variety of names.

“There’s quite a few children,” Gerrett said of the section I records.

What happened to these people is a mystery, she said.

Several possible explanations exist for the missing section.

A remote corner of Fairview Cemetery. (West Life photo by Larry Bennet)

“My best guess is it’s off the back,” Gerrett said, referring to the southern-most section of the cemetery, which borders the Rocky River Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. More than a century ago, the back sections of cemeteries were reserved for indigents, she said.

Gerrett said another possibility is that persons buried in section I were later reburied in other sections of the cemetery. But no records have been found to indicate this, she said.

“By no means am I saying these people are missing,” Gerrett said.

Will the mystery ever be solved? Gerrett, for one, is not giving up on finding the answer.

“I’m going to continue to pursue it,” she told West Life.

Gerrett said she first became interested in the cemetery while attending Memorial Day services there with her children years ago. Over the years, she’s taken 3,000 photos of the cemetery’s tombstones.

The cemetery was established when Francis Granger, president of the Connecticut Land Company, donated the land around 1830. As was the custom at the time, some bodies that had been buried on a family farm were later relocated to the cemetery, Gerrett said, meaning some bodies have dates of death from before the establishment of the cemetery.

The sign at the cemetery, which reads “Fairview Park Cemetery,” is incorrect, Gerrett said.

“The true name is Fairview Cemetery,” said Gerrett, who added the graveyard was once called Rockport Cemetery.

That’s not the only incorrect information at the cemetery, she said. In cemeteries more than a century old, roughly 30 percent of the information on the tombstones of buried individuals is inaccurate, Gerrett said. Grandchildren burying grandparents often guessed at their ages, she explained.

Gerrett recently gave a presentation on the history of the cemetery to the Fairview Park Historical Society. And last week, she met with Mayor Eileen Patton to share her documentation and volunteer to restore 10 headstones in conjunction with the city’s centennial this year. She also plans on giving tours of the cemetery during the Saturday of Summerfest, the city’s summer festival.

Gerrett said several military veterans are buried in Fairview Cemetery. She wants to identify if any veterans are buried there without a headstone. The federal government will pay for a headstone for veterans lacking one, Gerrett said. But the request must be made either by a relative of the deceased or the owner of the cemetery, in this case, the city of Fairview Park.

When asked to describe the condition of the cemetery, Gerrett responded, “It’s a cemetery that has a lot of character.” She went on to explain family plots are laid out in different ways in different sections.

The last burial in Fairview Cemetery took place in 2009, Gerrett said. The deceased’s remains had been cremated, she said.

Fairview Cemetery is considered closed, Gerrett said, in that no plots are available.

“Not every plot was sold,” Gerrett said. “And they are not selling them.”

About 600 gravesites exist in the two-acre cemetery, Gerrett said. The headstones had been quarried in Medina, she said.

“The city’s doing well at maintaining it,” she said.

The most famous resident buried there, in Gerrett’s opinion, is John Place Spencer, an early settler of the area. Members of other prominent families, such as the Masticks and the Jordons, are also buried there, she said. The two World War I soldiers — Frederick Gilles and John Sweet — after whom the public elementary school is named, also have their resting places there.

Gerrett, who began her research on the cemetery about three years ago, said she expects to spend another three years on research. She plans to donate her data to the Fairview Park Historical Society.

She acknowledges some people would say it’s sort of creepy to spend as much time as she does in cemeteries. But Gerrett said she enjoys the variety of work involved, including computer work, genealogy research and restoration of the gravestones.

“It’s very quiet and peaceful when you get to these places,” she said.