{"id":3608,"slug":"decatur-cemetery-decatur-ohio","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Decatur Cemetery sits in Byrd Township in Brown County — the stretch of the Ohio River that was the busiest crossing on the Underground Railroad. This is Ripley's county: the riverbank where John Parker's house stood, the hilltop where John Rankin lit the lantern that freedom seekers steered for, the narrow water that separated slave Kentucky from free Ohio. The National Park Service lists Decatur Cemetery in the Network to Freedom — the federal register that requires documented, verifiable association with the Underground Railroad.","A cemetery earns that listing through its dead — the abolitionists and station workers and, in the Ohio River counties, the freedom seekers themselves buried in the ground of the communities that sheltered them. Brown County's Underground Railroad was thick enough to draw the attention of the whole region: the 1847 Kentucky raid into neighboring Cass County, Michigan happened because slaveholders knew exactly where their escaping property was being helped. The graves at Decatur hold the people of the township that was part of that network.","The cemetery's stones carry the county's nineteenth century — Civil War soldiers among them, John P. Liggett killed in the war, laid beside his parents William and Mary. The oldest sections predate the records; the township keeps the newer plot books. The burial ground stands on the hills above the river corridor where the most documented escapes in the system's history crossed.","Decatur Cemetery is the archive's crossing-county file — the Brown County burial ground the Park Service verified as part of the Underground Railroad, in the township that shared a county with Rankin's lantern and Parker's door."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Decatur Cemetery is the archive's River-county file — the Byrd Township burial ground listed in the National Park Service's Network to Freedom, in the Brown County corridor where the Ohio River crossings fed the busiest stretch of the Underground Railroad.","A cemetery on the freedom corridor keeps its dead — the file's suggestion being that Decatur's hold is the community: the township that helped move people out of Kentucky buried its own here, in ground the Park Service verified as part of the network."]}],"name":"Decatur Cemetery","aliases":[],"type":"CEMETERY","type_label":"Cemetery","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","CEMETERY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD"],"groups":["cemeteries","dark-history"],"desc":"The cemetery—where the conductors rest.","full_desc":"Decatur Cemetery is a cemetery in Decatur, Ohio, an NPS Network to Freedom. The cemetery—where the conductors rest. HauntHunt files it with Underground Railroad history, the Underground Railroad and African American history. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The grounds are open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Decatur","county":null,"state":"Ohio","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":33.78222222,"lon":-84.29222222,"coord_kind":"WIKI","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"NPS Network to Freedom","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"UGRR enrichment wave 1; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":67.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Decatur Cemetery's history is documented — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath the ghost stories. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Decatur Cemetery is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. The burial ground's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Public cemetery; generally open during daylight hours. Be respectful of active burials; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Decatur Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decatur_Cemetery","desc":"Historic graveyard in DeKalb County, Georgia, US","extract":"The Decatur Cemetery is a historic graveyard within the city of Decatur, Georgia, United States.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Decatur_Cemetery_04.jpg/960px-Decatur_Cemetery_04.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":82,"lat":33.78222222,"lon":-84.29222222},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}