GREENFIELD, Ohio — The Village of Greenfield has finished replacing the roof on the Memorial Chapel at Greenfield Cemetery, part of what village officials described as a handful of upgrades underway at the historic burial ground this year.
Photos shared by the village government show the stone chapel’s weathered asphalt shingles, worn and streaked with age, swapped out for a new dark metal standing-seam roof. The village did not detail the cost of the project or the contractor involved.
The chapel, built of rough-cut limestone with a steep gable roof and a Gothic arched window of stained and leaded glass, carries a carved inscription reading “Memorial Chapel 1896” above its entrance. It has stood at the cemetery for 130 years as a gathering place for funeral services and memorial gatherings.
Greenfield Cemetery itself dates to 1868, when roughly 23 acres were purchased from local landowners John Anderson, Isaac Claypool, and J. & R. Smith for $3,875 and laid out by Leopold Weltz, a landscape gardener and florist from Wilmington. The grounds have grown to about 30 acres and include a Soldiers Monument dedicated in 1907 honoring Civil War veterans.
Just outside the chapel stands an Ohio Historical Marker for West Settlement and Abolition Lane, erected in 2003 to honor Augustus West, a formerly enslaved man who settled in neighboring Fayette County in the 1800s and helped establish one of the area’s first free-standing Black communities along a corridor once active in the Underground Railroad.
Village officials indicated the reroofing is among several improvements planned for the cemetery in 2026, though further details on additional projects were not released.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Village of Greenfield.
