by William Krause
c. 1814
Lakeside Cemetery in Bay Village
The third in a series of articles to be published as a walking tour of Lake Road by the Bay Village Historical Society in 2025.
The first pioneer death in Dover township was Rebecca Smith in 1811. Some early sources say that she was buried in this cemetery in 1811 and then moved elsewhere in 1820.
It is more plausible that Mrs. Rebecca Porter and her infant son Dennis, who tragically drowned off Rocky River in 1814, were the first burials in this cemetery because the original land for the cemetery was donated by her brother-in-law Reuben Osborn.
It was the first public burying ground in Dover Township, an area that today includes Bay Village, Westlake and the northern portion of North Olmsted. Additional land was purchased by township trustees in 1877, expanding the cemetery to a total of about one-half acre.
There are over 270 known burials including veterans from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
An Ohio Historical Marker was erected in 2002, and in 2005 money was raised to replace the fences surrounding the cemetery.
In 2021 owners of slivers of land surrounding the cemetery donated funds to construct barriers to prevent further erosion by Lake Erie.