By Helen Nickole

On a recent crisp, fall day in October the Village Burial Ground working group hosted Ashland Boy Scout Troop 232 and their leaders to a clean-up day event. 

This was a very special event for the community and the volunteers as community service was provided by the Boy Scouts and the Boy Scouts were given a chance to participate and learn about the history of Ashland. 

These 23 ambitious community service volunteers helped to clean brush and debris from the historic site. 

After cleaning up the area they then helped to document information and the condition of the gravestones noting their names, dates of birth and death, other interesting details on each stone. They also including the location, condition, repairs needed and more. 

This was an excellent way for the scouts to learn the history of the inhabitants of this historic cemetery here in Ashland. 

After documenting the historic gravestones, the scouts and their leaders placed veterans’ military recognition service markers on 12 civil war veterans’ graves then placing the American flag in each marker honoring the service of the war veterans interred here. 

As each gravesite was recognized, a Boy Scout would read a short history of the person being recognized.  

This service was so very heartwarming as not only was each veteran honored with the recognition that they justly deserve but the boys had the honor of serving them and learning their history. 

The scouts and adults learned the types of jobs that people had many of whom were shoe makers. They learned how each individual died many having died of consumption a term we don’t hear much in the current day. 

There are likely two additional civil war veterans gravestones in the village burial ground that have 

yet to be identified. We hope to be able to find and recognize these two additional veterans graves in the near future. 

The day was by all means a great success and we hope to have planted the seed of learning about Ashland’s history in each of the young people who attended this event. We hope to have inspired them in keeping the history of Ashland alive and thriving in this community for generations to come.