Rows of shallow depressions, up a grassy slope, too high to be seen from the drive that feeds campus parking lots in South Toledo. Each hollow is three or four feet long by 18 inches wide and nested with brown leaves. Underfoot, the ground is soft. To someone walking a dog through this cedar grove, the patterns would have scant meaning. But once informed by a single scrap of context, the place assumes an eerie, solemn aura.
They are grave dimples that have sunk slowly as the cargo beneath — wooden boxes cradling bodies wrapped long ago in cloth shrouds — decomposes.
Under one of these narrow cavities rests the bones of poor Margaret Kramer Funk. Her 1897 death notice reads “… the mother of several small children, has gone violently insane. She was taken to the asylum at Toledo, where she died on Saturday.” Her descendents in Mansfield wonder about her.
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