Wayne County Home Cemetery

Before I make a trip back home to Ohio, I make sure and scour Kaylah's archives over at her blog, The Dainty Squid for potential creepy adventures to have while I'm in town. Kaylah has discovered (and beautifully photographed) so many places around Ohio (and surrounding states) that I never knew existed in the 27 years that I called Ohio home, and I'll be forever playing catch-up on my short visits. 

One place that I added to my list the second I saw her post on it was the Wayne County Home Cemetery in Wooster, Ohio. I had recently visited my first cemetery for institutionalized patients—Letchworth Village's cemetery, in Rockland County, NY—and I've always been fascinated by asylums, institutions and their (often) anonymous grave markers. 

The nearby Wayne County home was established in 1852 for the elderly, sick and homeless. In the 1930s, a county hospital and nurses' home were built on the grounds, which comprises 286 acres of farmland in rural Northeast Ohio. Like the Staten Island Farm Colony, the Wayne County Home was nearly self-sufficient until the '70s with a dairy, gardens and a working farm. The Home was renamed the Wayne County Care Center in 1983 and it is currently operating as a nursing home. 

Despite knowing that the cemetery is easily accessible and surrounded by cornfields, I was still surprised when it seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of miles of farmland. There is no dedicated parking lot, but there is a gravel turnaround across the street, so I parked there and no one seemed to mind. I don't usually get too sad at human cemeteries (pet cemeteries are an entirely different‚ and more emotional, experience for me) but I mourn the anonymity of these people's death's—and in a lot of cases, their lives.