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Recently we went to Harvard Grove Cemetery, which is on the east side of Cleveland, south of the larger Woodland Cemetery and nearby Slavic Village. It’s one of Cleveland’s older cemeteries still in use. There is a single gate and single road in, which loops around in the back half of the cemetery to bring you back out the same way. Despite its name, the cemetery has no entrance on Harvard Avenue, only on Lansing Avenue. The other thing I noticed, which probably makes Harvard Grove a typical American cemetery is that is has almost no famous graves – if you search for the cemetery on Find-a-Grave, the only even “somewhat famous” person that the website pulls up is the founder of a chewing gum company. Even though it is still in use and relatively accessible, Harvard Grove seems forgotten – no one even seems to make a big deal of its six Revolutionary War veterans, the most buried in any Cleveland cemetery.
The cemetery has suffered at the hands of nature – there are a number of trees that appear to have weathered lightning strikes – and vandals – a number of graves had been scribbled on, and the number of toppled monuments seemed out of proportion with other cemeteries of similar size to simply be the ravages of time. Like Woodland, the main road is paved (some of it quite recently) but the side roads for maintenance are grassy ruts. Unlike other cemeteries (Monroe Street and Woodland), the gates are intact, but badly rusted.
A Grave Concern 