115 years ago in 1907

Taken directly from the pages of The Youngstown Vindicator:

“A long-cherished project of George Tod’s involving a magnificent gift to the city of Youngstown is announced today. The veteran manufacturer’s intention is to present to the city the old ‘Brier Hill’ farm, bound up with the history of the state and the city as the home of David Tod, ‘the war governor’ of Ohio, and as the scene of coal mines of which the operation gave the city its first impetus towards its present greatness as a manufacturing center.

“The farm, extending from Brier Hill through to Belmont Avenue, is to be used as a cemetery. The lots are to be sold, but all the money is to be dedicated to making the grounds more beautiful.

“The one condition attached to the gift is that Mr. Tod himself is to be the first man buried in it.

“That Mr. Tod was planning this gift has been known to his family and friends for several years. He made no secret of it, but took pleasure in talking it over with them and getting their ideas. Not only has he consulted his intimate acquaintances, but he has made free to speak of his plan to farmers living about his large place, so that he might have the advice of men who have known the farm and its possibilities from boyhood.

“Mr. Tod had two purposes. The first was to keep the farm intact. Before he resolved upon the plan to make a cemetery of it, he had decided that it should never be cut up. It has been in the Tod family for a hundred years. Judge George Tod, after whom Mr. Tod was named, acquired it when he came to the Western Reserve from Connecticut, and after serving in the War of 1812 and on the Common Pleas bench in Trumbull County, settled down there as a gentleman farmer.

“But Judge Tod knew more of the theory of farming that the practice; management of the estate drew him into financial difficulties and danger threatened that it would have to pass into the hands of strangers.

“On that occasion, however, as at present, the farm was kept undivided, and Judge Tod’s son, David, later governor of Ohio during the Civil War, raised a debt that hung over it.

“David Tod came into possession of the place upon the death of his father in 1841. His development of the rich veins of coal then running through it invited manufacturers to build their mills here and laid the foundation of the Valley’s industrial prosperity.

“Governor Tod returned to the farm, broken in health by the events of war, passed the rest of his life there, where he died in 1868. From Governor Tod, the farm passed to his son George.

“Pride in the estate which had come down through three generations, then, was one reason for George Tod’s gift. The other was that Mr. Tod did not believe that a cemetery should be conducted for profit. He believed that a cemetery is a sacred and holy place and that all idea of money-making should be as far from it as possible. To that end, he arranged that proceeds from the sale of plots should go back to the land and year by year make it more attractive.

“Through Mr. Tod’s generosity to the city comes into possession of a historic place, the associations of which will make it as desirable a burying ground as Oak Hill, consecrated by the use of years.”

• Compiled from the archives of The Vindicator by Traci Manning, Mahoning Valley Historical Society curator of education