Summer 2024 BZAP application approval

The Upper Arlington Board of Zoning and Planning has approved a conditional use application allowing Upper Arlington Schools to rebury the cremated remains of one individual in the Pleasant Litchford Memorial Garden at Upper Arlington High School. This small landscaped area in the south parking lot near the softball and baseball fields was formerly the site of the Litchford Family Cemetery.

The remains are of a young girl whose grave was missed when the cemetery was appropriated by the district in the 1950s. At that time, dozens of bodies were exhumed from the Litchford Family Cemetery and moved to other locations. However, in 2020 archeologists discovered that the grave of the young girl had been missed, leaving her buried at the high school site for nearly 60 years after the rest of the cemetery had been relocated.

Since that time, the school district has been working with Litchford family descendants, the City of Upper Arlington and the Upper Arlington Historical Society to learn more about the young girl and to honor the life and legacy of Pleasant Litchford, who became one of the largest landowners in the area after being enslaved in Virginia in the 1800s. 

Because the young girl is unidentified, the school district and the descendant family felt it would be most respectful to return her remains to the site selected as her final resting place by her loved ones at the time of her death.

The district will work with the Litchford family descendants to identify a timeline for the reburial and additional ways to honor the history of the site.