For one Fairfield County woman, death came two weeks too soon, leaving her tombstone engraved with a number, not a name.
Just two weeks after Martha Jane Saum’s death, administrators at the Athens Lunatic Asylum began putting names on headstones of the deceased. Saum, whose headstone is engraved with 699, was the last female patient to have only numerals mark her grave.
Seven decades later, two local groups are now at odds over how to best preserve the historical integrity of the cemetery while also respecting those who are buried there.
A Logan based group, Friends of Athens Asylum Cemeteries, was founded with the goal of putting names on the unmarked sites in the cemeteries.
Group members, such as Berta Lockhart, founder and president of Friends of Athens, believe this is how dignity will be restored to those buried individuals.
“We believe that we are all more than just a number. When you place a marker in someone’s final resting place, it is giving them the simple dignity and respect that they deserve,” Lockhart said.
Whereas the Friends of Athens Asylum Cemeteries focuses on naming the gravestones, the two organizations that approve the new headstone requests are worried about preserving the history of the cemetery, one that extends far beyond Athens County.
Lawrence County, with the single most unmarked graves at The Ridges, is much closer to Huntington, W. Va., than Athens.
Dozens who found the asylum’s grounds to be their final resting place hail from Cleveland, Cincinnati and beyond.
That distance sometimes inhibited the ability of families to claim their loved ones, leaving their gravestones unchristened.
Requests to name headstones must be approved by family members before both the Athens affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services approve them.
“Legitimate relatives that can prove they have a relationship have always been able to put up markers,” said Tom Walker, a member of the Athens affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “In most cases, (Friends of Athens’ requests) are pretty plausible … but sometimes the connection is really remote.”
Walker said he has been moved after seeing reunions between family members and their deceased loved ones, but he believes the cemetery’s history must also be taken into account.
“We can give (unmarked graves) names and dates in a way that doesn’t destroy the historical integrity of the cemetery,” Walker said. “(Marking graves) is superficially a good idea, but it runs in conflict with the historical nature of those cemeteries and how they ought to be preserved.”
All names of patients buried — marked or unmarked — can be accessed online and in Alden Library.
Friends of Athens’ genealogists use that information to try to contact relatives of those buried in the cemeteries, while the National Alliance waits for family members to take the initiative.
The state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services agrees with the National Alliance’s desires to preserve the history of the cemeteries.
“It is very educational to see how it used to be, so for a single entity to decide that they want to change the look of the whole cemetery — that is just not something we support,” said Trudy Sharp, the department’s communications director. “As an individual, even today, if your sister passed away you would want to make the decision on the headstone, not a company or a group of strangers.”
However, Karyn Williams said she was appreciative when Friends of Athens contacted her to put a name on her great-great grandfather’s headstone — which had been known as Gravestone 379 since his death in 1905.
“(Marking graves) is what’s right,” Williams said. “To look down there now and see the numbers that still don’t have headstones with a name is extremely appalling to me and very emotional.”
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