Olive Chapel

(September 26, continued) I continued on south on County Road 64 to the intersection of Township Highway 69. There is a small cemetery on the west side of the road, where I stopped for photos.

According to the 1880 history of Logan County, this area wasn’t settled until after the War of 1812. There was a church here, known at one time as Olive Chapel. There is no sign of it now. I enjoyed the following description from page 375. I hadn’t realized that log cabins would be built without erecting a chimney as soon as possible:

The first organized church was probably in the Newman neighborhood. Here a log church was erected in 1828… The building was arranged as was common in those days. The seats were principally of smooth rails supported on legs. To furnish the necessary warmth, a square box was placed in the centre of the room and filled with dirt; on this a wood fire was built, allowing the smoke to escape where it could. Fortunately for the comfort of the audience, the character of the early building offered little obstruction to the passage of smoke, and the people suffered no great inconvenience from this source. Later, charcoal was used, and the people were saved from more serious consequences by the free ventilation allowed in the construction of the cabin. About 1840 the present frame building was erected… (page 375)

There is a genealogy web that lists many more gravestones than I remembered seeing at this little cemetery. Then I remembered that there are actually two cemeteries. There was a larger one on the other side of the road, and a bit further north.

I had taken a photo of the larger one a few years earlier. Did the two cemeteries represent two factions in the congregation? Or was one the church cemetery and the other a family cemetery? I don’t know.

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