Cindy Mustard, a member of the Columbia Cemetery Association Board of Trustees, identifies the graves of Mary Jane Todd, daughter of David and Eliza Todd, who died at age 9 in 1824. The grave is the oldest identifiable grave in the nearly 200-year-old cemetery. [PHOTOS BY DON SHRUBSHELL/TRIBUNE]
A grave legacy W ander through the maze of roads and graves in Columbia Cemetery for long enough, and eventually you’ll find the spot near the corner of Bowling and Prewitt streets where a stone plaque marks the grave of nine-year-old Mary Jane Todd. The Todd family buried Mary Jane Todd in 1824, four years after the Columbia Cemetery opened and three years after early settlers incorporated the city about a half mile away near the Flat Branch Creek. Columbia’s first business, the not-for-profit Columbia Cemetery Association, remains one of two businesses from around the
BY PHILIP JOENS Columbia Daily Tribune
town’s founding to still be in operation. Today, Mary Jane Todd's grave is the oldest, still identifiable grave in the cemetery, said Columbia Cemetery Superintendent Tanja Patton. From Mary Jane Todd’s Grave, visitors can see the town below them to the east. Crucially, graves on the spot also face the rising sun, as is the Christian tradition. The early settlers of Smithton opened the cemetery on the site of an existing cemetery on the farm, just to the south of Mary Jane Todd’s grave, Patton said. “This was the high point,” Patton said. “Cemeteries were generally put on the highest point near a city up on a hill.”
