Hollie Wallace, a Mahoning Valley Historical Society member, holds a picture of William Freed, who was the first-known Youngstown police officer killed in the line of duty, having been shot to death in 1891, and who is interred in Oak Hill Cemetery in Youngstown. Wallace was among those who conducted tours of the historical cemetery Saturday. Correspondent photo / Sean Barron

YOUNGSTOWN — Hollie Wallace had the task of bringing to life some of the Mahoning Valley’s most influential late movers and shakers — with a few colorful and tragic characters thrown in for good measure.

“This is a reflection of 100 years of Youngstown culture and diversity. Every kind of person is in here somewhere,” Wallace, a Mahoning Valley Historical Society board member, said.

She was referring to Oak Hill Cemetery on the South Side, which was the site of a dozen walking tours Saturday to narrate and educate participants on the lives of many of the region’s best known families who are interred there. They include everyone from those who helped build the city to a few caught in a love triangle that led to murder.

The MVHS hosted the four-hour series of tours.

Wallace began the first one by outlining a brief history of the 25-acre hilly cemetery in which an estimated 25,000 people are buried. Its origins date to about 1850, when a group of city residents formed the Mahoning Cemetery Association.

In 1853, the association bought 16 acres from Dr. Henry Manning, the organization’s inaugural chairman. Three years later, he sold an additional three acres to the township of Youngstown, and in 1865, John Brenner, a German immigrant who worked with Manning’s son James, was hired as the site’s first superintendent.

Starting in 1887, Oak Hill operated a potter’s field for those who were destitute and could not afford a proper burial. It was closed in 1890, however, when the board of health deemed it unsafe and unsanitary, Wallace explained, adding that some of those who were buried on the site were moved to another part of the cemetery.

One of the first gravesite stops was that of William Freed, a Youngstown police officer who was shot to death May 20, 1891, after he and a partner on foot patrol in downtown Youngstown heard a gunshot and chased a burglary suspect they had seen running from the scene. Freed was 27.

“His funeral was the largest in Youngstown at that time,” Wallace said.

The group of about 20 also visited the resting place of John “Jack” Scheibel, who was born in Brier Hill and made his professional baseball debut in 1893 and pitched for the Cleveland Spiders and Philadelphia Phillies before his death Aug. 6, 1897, at the Mahoning County Hospital at age 31.

Wallace quoted a Vindicator article that said of Scheibel: “As a ballplayer, he was a determined person, and as a citizen, always sociable, quiet and unassuming.”

The tour also reached the cemetery’s highest point, on which is David Tod’s burial plot.

Before entering politics in 1838 and running for state Senate, Tod, who was an attorney and industrialist, served as Warren’s postmaster and had been admitted to the Ohio Bar Association in 1827.

President James K. Polk appointed him as minister of Brazil from 1847 to 1851 before Tod became a one-time governor between 1862 and 1864. He also joined the pro-Union alliance between the state’s Republicans and war Democrats.

Those on the tour also learned about Col. Caleb B. Wick, who was born Oct. 1, 1795, in Washington County, Pa., and moved to Youngstown when he was 7. In 1817, he was commissioned as lieutenant of the 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, 4th Division of the Ohio Militia, then became a colonel in the 1st Regiment.

He also followed mercantile pursuits for about 30 years, Wallace noted.

“The whole house is amazing,” she said, referring to the Arms Family Museum, whose longtime occupant, Olive F. Arms, is buried in the cemetery. Interred in a nearby mausoleum is her father, Charles Dayton Arms.

Another stop included learning about the sordid affair that led to the July 1905 shotgun death of Louis V. Bergman, who was having an affair with Margaret Harbison, whose husband, James, had recently separated from her.

After shooting Bergman four times and holding Margaret Harbison and her sister hostage in the home, James Harbison surrendered before being tried on a murder charge for which he was acquitted after 11 hours of deliberations. The couple eventually got back together and moved to California, Wallace explained.

Before his trial, Harbison told The Vindicator, “I hated to do it, but what could a man do under the circumstances? I gave my wife a good home, loved her … yet with all this, she would not behave herself.”

In addition, Wallace told the tragic story of Richard Richards, who was killed Aug. 18, 1901, in an industrial accident that resulted from an explosion at the Ohio Plant of the National Steel Co. off Salt Springs Road. The accident apparently occurred when a large bolt that held a ladle filled with hot molten material broke.

Richards also was considered one of the Valley’s best amateur baseball players, Wallace noted.

Other resting places the group visited included those of Oscar Boggess, a bricklayer and stone mason; Charles B. Moyer, Youngstown’s first detective; and P. Ross Berry, who became a master stone mason and bricklayer by age 16.

Among the well-known buildings bearing his work were The Rayen School, the second St. Columba Cathedral, the Lawrence County, (Pa.) Courthouse, the jail on Hazel Street and First Presbyterian Church, Wallace explained.

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