Phillips-Brubaker Cemetery

Gratis Township, Section 4
Preble County, Ohio


39N 39'03" Lat
84W 32'19" Long




Final resting place for early Ohio Pioneers...and an American Patriot.


Cemetery is located in Gratis Township, Section 4 - just west of Winchester.








The Phillips-Brubaker Cemetery is off S.R. 122, just west of the Fair View Cemetery drive.
(Graphic from Terraserver http://terraserver.microsoft.com)










In June 1997 the cemetery was a hidden, overgrown plot in a farmed field. The only sentinel keeping the cemetery from being erased by progress is a huge tree within the 20 x 30 foot fenced family burying ground.


In the aerial photo the cemetery can be seen as a smudge in the plowed field. The smudge is the shadow cast by the large tree in the cemetery.
(Photo from Terraserver http://terraserver.microsoft.com)



Most of the cemetery index that we came across while researching the Phillips line only listed four people being buried in the small family plot. In June 1997 we took a field trip to take photos of Hezekiah and Catharine Phillips‘s tombstones. The cemetery was abandoned and very overgrown (as seen in the 2 tombstone photo Once we were able to cut the weeds and locate the tombstones we made the above drawing of the family cemetery. The only stones with legible names were Hezekiah Phillips, his wife, Catharine Phillips, Harvey Hart and Peter Brubaker As shown on the cemetery layout, we determined there were a total of 13 graves by locating toe stones, broken stones, flag stones and by getting on our hands and knees and feeling the depressions left from old burials.



Hezekiah Phillips
Died
June 4, 1811
Aged 55 Yrs
Grave marked by DAR plaque
and tattered American flag


Catharine Phillips
Died
Dec 12, 1840
Aged 79 Yrs






         Hezekiah’s tombstone                         Catharine’s tombstone

If you are interested in the Phillips family, please send me an E-mail.

copyright 2006 Scot Shively
since 25 Mar 08