DECEMBER 21, 2020 — Upper Arlington Schools is continuing to work with descendants of Pleasant Litchford and other community volunteers to determine the next steps for honoring the history of the Litchford family cemetery site adjacent to the current Upper Arlington High School building. This includes the possibility of additional archaeological work on the site and the creation of a formal memorial near the site of the cemetery.
Pleasant Litchford was a master blacksmith who had been enslaved in Virginia. After buying his own freedom and settling in the area that is now Upper Arlington, he built a successful business and purchased the land that is now home to the high school as well as Northam Park and Tremont Elementary School. Among Mr. Litchford’s many contributions to the area were establishing a school for African-American children and being a founding member of the historic Second Baptist Church, which provided an important voice in the anti-slavery movement.
Following his death in 1879, Mr. Litchford’s land was divided up between his heirs. Decades later, in the 1950s, the school district acquired the piece of land that was home to the cemetery in order to build a high school. Approximately 30 bodies were exhumed and moved to other cemeteries in the area.
Published in early 2017, Secrets Under the Parking Lot, a book by local authors Diane Kelly Runyon and Kim Shoemaker Starr, raised concerns that some of those laid to rest in the Litchford cemetery may have been left behind. The goal of the archaeological investigation in July and August of this year was to identify if any graves still remained and if any artifacts could be found.
In late August, an archaeological team found one fully intact grave with a complete set of remains, along with two partially exhumed graves and three fully exhumed graves. The archaeological team carefully removed the remains, which are being safely held in its lab while the district works with descendants of the Litchford family and families who may have had ancestors buried at the site to determine how to properly honor those individuals and to commemorate the site.
A memorial near the site of the cemetery is just one of the projects planned. There will also be historical displays in the new high school, which is under construction north of the cemetery site, on the corner of Brandon and Zollinger roads. In addition, the district has worked with the authors and a team of volunteers to create historical timelines to support an expanded history curriculum.