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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region's history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.
October is the perfect month for exploring local cemeteries. This week, we are highlighting Warren's most prominent place of burial and, particularly, the first person who was laid to rest there.
Elizabeth Lewis Iddings was the first person buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Today, the cemetery boasts more than 30,000 residents. When Elizabeth was buried in 1849, the cemetery consisted of 16 acres. Today, the cemetery clocks in at 44 acres with landscaped driving paths and mausoleums, and still is accepting payments for burial plots.
Elizabeth was born into a prominent Warren family. Iddings Avenue, a side street off East Market, was named after them. Her father, Richard, was a tailor with a reputable business downtown. He was, according to Harriet Taylor Upton, "one of the staunchest of the early settlers," and would eventually be elected to the state legislature in 1830. Richard's wife and Elizabeth's mother, Justina Lewis, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and according to Upton was a woman of "sweet character."
When Elizabeth was born, the family lived in a house where the Best Western Park Hotel stands today. She was Richard and Justina's youngest child and only daughter, and grew up with four brothers: Lewis, Morris, Warren and Hiram. Warren, who would go on to marry Laura Webb and live in the John Stark Edwards House in Warren, would become a well-known physician and one of the first doctors in the United States who was given permission to practice embalming techniques during the Civil War.
Elizabeth's cause of death is unknown. Her burial record at Oakwood Cemetery doesn't list a cause and all mentions of her in the Trumbull County Historical Society's records do not give any indication of why she died so young at the age of 24.
At the time of her death, Elizabeth's father and her brother, Hiram, had joined forces with Jacob and Joseph Perkins, Frederick Kinsman and other civically minded men to form the Oakwood Cemetery Association. Before the 1840s, Old Mahoning, or "Pioneer" Cemetery on Mahoning Avenue was the only place of burial for Warren's residents. Henry Lane had donated the land for this first cemetery in 1804. By the 1840s, Warren's population was growing and there was a clear need for a larger area in the community for citizens to be laid to rest.
If you drive into the cemetery today, you will find Elizabeth's grave at the top of a larger hill straight ahead along the entrance driving path. This early section of the cemetery, where many of the first burials took place, sits on high ground overlooking the fields that would become home to many of Warren's notable citizens.
The only image of Elizabeth that survives today is a painting in TCHS's collection. Until a few years ago, it remained with the descendants of the Iddings family, and was donated to TCHS as a bequest to honor the memory of the family in our community. The painting shows a young woman with rosy cheeks holding flowers. She sits in a white dress, cut to the style of the time, with her brown hair swept back and pinned toward the back of her head.
While we do not know very much about Elizabeth today, paintings like this one survive to remember those who came before us and left their mark on our community, even today.
Reed is the executive director of the Trumbull County Historical Society.