Investigating Seward-Giles Cemetery in Aurora, Ohio

Aurora, Ohio

The Seward-Giles Cemetery is located off of Aurora Lake Road. Getting to it requires you to park at a very small turnoff, walk along the path and over a footbridge before ending up in a well-kept clearing in the woods dotted with benches and the remnants of gravestones. Thankfully, there’s a sign alerting you to the fact that this is actually a cemetery.

You can see the walk in the video below:

The Seward, Giles, and Other Families

According to the records, the first person buried in the cemetery was Joel Seward, sometimes referred to as John in the records. Born in Connecticut in 1733, he served in the Revolutionary War in the Massachusetts regiment. He married Laurana Seward in Massachusetts in 1756. The two went on to have nine kids, most of which made it to adulthood.

Laurana Seward never made it to Ohio. She passed in 1778, the same year that their youngest child was born. In 1812, Joel and his children moved to what is now Aurora, Ohio. They set up a farm, which eventually wound up in the hands of his grandson, Alvan Seward (more on him in a minute.) The elder Joel Seward died in 1827 and was buried in a plot on the family land. Other members of the Seward family followed him, along with deceased relatives of the Giles, Williams, Marshall, and McClintock families.

The Seward Family on an 1850 Map of Aurora

Alvan (sometimes spelled Alvin) Seward is also buried in the cemetery. He was a well-known shoemaker in Aurora, and his wife, “was a bright woman, plain and outspoken, her quaint way of putting things was often pat and amusing, and her sayings repeated by the neighboring women as just to the point, terse and applicable” according to sources.

Members of the Giles family, on the other hand, have an ancestor who was instrumental in creating the Geauga Lake amusement park. Sullivan Giles, born in New York state, lived in nearby Bainbridge. He opened up ‘Giles Pond” (later renamed Geauga Lake) to people who wanted a place to fish, dance in the hall that he built, and do other leisurely activities. Over time, and after his death, the space became an amusement park. Although some members of the Giles family are buried in Seward-Giles Cemetery, Sullivan is not. He rests in the aptly named Restland Cemetery in nearby Bainbridge.

History of the Seward-Giles Cemetery

As the decades went by, the Seward-Giles Cemetery was forgotten. Finally, in 1980 developers and historians rediscovered it, kicking off a lengthy series of negotiations regarding its fate. By 2002, developers of the nearby Hawthorne Development gave the tiny plot of land to the city and created an easement for public access. This was followed by a dedication ceremony in 2008.

Which brings up an important question: how many other small cemeteries are out there, forgotten by time?