WASHINGTON TWP – The top of the hill behind the Washington Township Fire Department may seem unassuming, but buried beneath its soil is a wealth of history.
Resting in the Swisher Cemetery at 2480 Possum Run Road are two veterans, a man and his grandson, who helped shape the course of American history. The first, Solomon Culver, served as a private in the Revolutionary War; his grandson, Thomas Culver, served as a private in the Civil War.
The two men were discovered five years ago through pure coincidence by the trustees of Washington Township. Jack Butler, chair of the trustees, was in the process of trying to sell the land and had every intention of moving the old cemetery to allay the concerns of potential developers.
“When we learned we had a cemetery, we had to go to the Ohio Genealogical Society, and that’s the first time we learned we had a Revolutionary War soldier and his grandson buried out back,” Butler said. “It turned out to be a good thing, at least it got the ball rolling in needing to do something with it.”
Solomon Culver was born on Aug. 10, 1760 in Litchfield, Connecticut and served as an Army private in the 17th New York Militia from 1777 to 1778. He married Lodemia Burr in 1781, and the two of them moved to what would be Washington Township in 1816, where he also served as a township trustee.
“The fact that he is linked to us 200 years later, we think that’s pretty cool,” said vice chair of the trustees Kay Leitenberger.
Solomon Culver died on April 2, 1855 at the age of 94, an impressive age for any time period. His grandson Thomas was not so lucky.
Thomas Culver, otherwise known as T.J. Culver, was born on Jan. 15, 1834. He served as an Army private in Company C of the 163rd Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. He died on Sept. 18, 1864 at the age of 30.
“When T.J. died, it was very common for them to die from bad infections from their wounds,” Leitenberger said. “Think of the potentially painful death that would have been.”
Upon learning that Solomon and Thomas were residents of the township’s Swisher Cemetery, all talk of moving their graves halted. Instead, the trustees shifted to preserving the Culver legacy, and five years ago decided to petition the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for official veteran grave markers for each man.
“We as the board were 100 percent that this was the right thing to do for our community, and it was the right thing to do to remind the larger community of the sacrifices that these men and their families made,” Leitenberger said.
After a long process of verifying the Culvers’ service and wading through federal government procedure, the grave markers for Solomon and Thomas arrived in Washington Township over the summer. The trustees have planned a ceremony to officially install and welcome the two new grave markers.
“Here are these men, and we are honoring them quite a few years later because they deserve that honor,” Butler said.
The ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7 in Swisher Cemetery, behind the fire station on Possum Run Road. The Veterans Service Commission for Richland County will provide a color guard representing the Revolutionary and Civil War, the biographies of the two Culvers will be read, and a burial squad will provide a seven-gun salute.
A ceremony to acknowledge the sacrifice of Solomon and Thomas to the country was a no-brainer for the trustees.
“Especially today with so much negativity about the mess going on in this country, we felt it would be a positive thing to show that we do respect the people buried here, and especially the veterans,” said trustee Bob Entenmann.
“I’m proud that we as the current township trustee board have been given the responsibility to afford them their place in history by having their graves properly marked,” added Leitenberger. “For us to participate in this has been a real blessing for each one of us doing the job as a township trustee.”
