Walnut Grove Cemetery

Side A: The Walnut Grove Cemetery is the burial place of members of the Zane and Martin families. Their graves lie within the brick enclosure. The cemetery is also the resting-place of many early Martins Ferry residents, including veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. The Zane and Martin families were significant in the pioneer history of the region. Betty Zane’s legendary heroism at Fort Henry (now Wheeling, West Virginia) helped settlers resist an attack by the British and their Native American allies in September 1782. (Continued on other side) Side B: Absalom Martin, one of the first Americans to buy land in the Northwest Territory and regarded as one of the first to legally settle here, received the first license to operate a ferry on the Ohio River in 1789. Ebenezer and Jonathan Zane, Betty’s brothers, laid out Zane’s Trace in 1796 across what would become southeast Ohio. Ebenezer and Minerva Zane Martin sold the cemetery’s land to the town of Martins Ferry in 1866 for $100.