Lot 31: The Ground the Gist Settlement Set Apart
Ohio Historical Marker 5-36, side two, listing the settlement’s thirty-one lots. Lot 31 is the cemetery. Gist Settlement Road, Penn Township, Highland County, Ohio, September 26, 2026.
The back of the marker is the side most people skip.
On a bright Saturday in late September I stood beside Gist Settlement Road in Penn Township, Highland County, Ohio, and read it line by line. Ohio Historical Marker 5-36 lists thirty-one numbered lots and the people who held them: Good, Lawson, Carey, Rollins, Lawrence, Hailstock, Buford, Turner, Mitchell, Essex, Brooks, Day. Lot 30 went to the Board of Education. The last line reads simply “31 – Cemetery.”
That cemetery was the grass under my feet.
The front of the marker, placed in 2003, carries the history as the state tells it. Samuel Gist, a British absentee landowner who died in 1815, freed by his will the people he held enslaved in Virginia and left money for their land, homes, schools and churches. The marker says an agent of his estate bought 207 acres here in 1831 and 1835 and divided them into thirty-one lots, and that the Highland County settlement was the last of the Gist lands to be purchased and settled.
A marker is a summary written long after the fact. So I looked for the county’s own record.
Highland County’s Plat Book 1 holds a survey of the “Gest Settlement lands as sub-divided among the claimants under order of the Common Pleas Court.” It is dated at Hillsboro in December 1894, and the clerk spelled the name with an “e.” The lots are numbered 1 to 31. On the second page, at the edge of the drawing where the roads meet, a narrow parcel carries a short label: “Cem’ty No. 31.”
Plat of the Gest Settlement lands, December 1894, transcribed 1905, detail. The cemetery, Lot 31, is the narrow parcel at far left. Highland County Recorder, Plat Book 1, p. 453.
Two records made more than a century apart agree on that single line. Of thirty-one lots, one was set apart for the dead, and it is still in use today. Across the road stands Carthagenia Baptist Church, its date stone reading “Built 1897 – Rebuilt 1958.”
Next month the settlement’s own story will be told on that ground.
The Gist Settlement Cemetery with the state marker at center and Carthagenia Baptist Church at right, September 26, 2026.
On Saturday, October 24, at 6:00 p.m., Gist Settlement Legacy hosts an evening of live storytelling at the Gist Settlement Cemetery, 6380 Gist Settlement Road, New Vienna, Ohio. Historical figures from the settlement’s past will share the stories of their lives. Admission is free and all ages are welcome; bring a lawn chair. The host asks visitors not to park on Gist Settlement Road. Parking is available on Rollins Road. Details are at gistsettlementlegacy.com and on the host’s Facebook page.
The marker gives the names. The plat fixes the ground. On October 24, Gist Settlement Legacy will tell the stories behind them.
