The Crawford County Board of Supervisors on December 19 voted to transfer ownership of the Charter Oak Cemetery to the Charter Oak Township Board of Trustees.

Supervisor Kyle Schultz noted that the transfer had been in the works for about a year.

“So, they’ll be in charge of hiring caretakers?” asked Chairman Ty Rosburg.

“They do that already, but they’re just not getting the money for it – other than (money for) a few graves we’ve had to go locate,” Schultz said. “They take care of the mowing.”

“They are getting the money; the money is in an account that they need to transfer to the township,” said Crawford County Auditor Terri Martens.

With ownership of the cemetery transferred, Martens said she hoped the account issue could be resolved.

Supervisor Craig Dozark asked if the county owns any other cemeteries.

Martens said Crawford County owns a cemetery near Arion that at one time was part of the county farm.

“But there are no new burials there,” Martens said.

Dozark asked how the county came to own the Charter Oak Cemetery.

Schultz explained that an association managed the cemetery; in the 1990s, the last member of the association didn’t know what to do with it and gave it to the county.

The minutes of the April 2, 1991, Crawford County Board of Supervisors meeting shows that at that meeting, the supervisors met with the Charter Oak Township trustees and clerk and accepted a quit claim deed from the Charter Oak Cemetery Association dated 2/26/1991.

“This just gets it back to the township trustees to manage,” Schultz said.

“They want it back,” said Supervisor Jean Heiden.

Schultz noted that when the question of the transfer first came up, County Attorney Colin Johnson did some research on a possible problem.

The issue Johnson looked into concerned the February 26, 1991, quit claim deed, which had specified the assignment of a lot to the heirs of the woman buried there.

“There was a reservation on it,” Johnson said. “We, upon more research, found it’s not applicable anymore. That was holding us up a little bit.”

The supervisors voted 5-0 to transfer ownership of the cemetery to the Charter Oak Township Board of Trustees.

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