The Four Veterans of Coulter Cemetery
Wildflowers at Coulter Cemetery, Wilson Township, Clinton County, Ohio, with farm fields and a farmstead beyond. Photographed September 20, 2026.
After nearly a year with the Clinton County Infirmary’s cemetery, I started looking at the county’s other burying grounds on Find a Grave. Some had no photographs and no proper description. So I printed a list of the ones with no pictures and set out to photograph them. Coulter Cemetery was first on the list, and I didn’t know where it was. I meant to find it, take a picture and move on, the same way I once meant only to find my fourth great-grandfather’s grave. Neither stayed that simple.
The county’s cemetery book places Coulter two miles north of Reesville, Ohio, about a third of a mile east of State Route 72: three-quarters of an acre, donated by John Coulter. A 1950 typescript of Daughters of the American Revolution records calls it a Quaker burying ground. The oldest death in either list is 1828.
The 1876 county atlas draws a dashed lane from the road, past the Coulter residence, to the ground. No lane appears on the county’s aerial photographs from 2000 on. Today the only way in is a grass lane along a fence row off State Route 72, north of the old entrance, and then on foot between fields.
An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Clinton County, Ohio, 1876, p. 12. Scan: Clinton County Engineer’s GIS website.
In the WPA’s 1938–1940 survey of the county’s veterans’ graves, workers drew Coulter’s 60 lots and lettered four names. (Here’s how to read one of these plats.) Each man also has a grave registration card, and the cards don’t always agree with the other records.
James Spencer
His card calls him Captain and lists service in the Revolution and the War of 1812. The card’s own source, the 1882 county history, says he served as a private in the Revolution and as a captain in the War of 1812 under Gen. Harrison. A 1938 summary of his pension file says he was commissioned a lieutenant in a Virginia company in 1780 and served as a spy on the frontier until 1782. The 1812 muster rolls the card cites list the company under Capt. John Spencer.
Ohio Soldiers Grave Registration Card (Ohio History Connection, State Archives Series 183; Fold3 frame 182779_0001446). War Served In: Revolutionary & 1812.
Three records give three deaths. The card says October 17, 1843, with burial on October 20. The DAR typescript says October 15, 1842. His widow, Mary, applied for his pension in 1848; her file records their marriage in 1793, their fourteen children, and his death on October 22, 1843. In 1917 a Wilmington, Ohio, paper reported that a fourth-generation descendant, a member of the D.A.R., “wished to put honors of the same at the grave.”
John and William Coulter
John Coulter’s card lists him as a private in Capt. John Spencer’s company for two weeks in May 1813 and gives no dates of birth or death. A John Coulter, Sen., who is buried here, was born in Ireland in 1776, served in the British army there, came to the United States in 1805 and died February 13, 1857, according to his obituary, which says nothing of 1812. The 1950 typescript’s age at his death points instead to 1777. The county book names the man who gave the ground only as John Coulter. Whether the donor, the private and the man in the obituary are one man, these records don’t say.
William Coulter’s card lists him as a private in the same company, the Ohio Spies, from August 27, 1812, to March 4, 1814. In 1938 his grave had no marker. Neither the county book nor the DAR typescript lists him.
James H. Channel
His card says he was born in 1845, enlisted July 9, 1861, as a private in Company G, 11th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and died of typhoid in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 7, 1861. The county book gives November 9, 1861, aged 16 years, 1 month and 3 days.
Where the records disagree, I’ve shown each reading and its source rather than picking one. Weighing conflicting evidence openly is part of the Genealogical Proof Standard I work by.
In August I spent several weeks at Coulter, evenings and weekends, with two battery-powered push mowers and a string trimmer. I cleared fallen limbs, trimmed trees and the growth around stones too large to move, mowed the whole ground twice, and recovered about 35 stones from a mound of earth near the center of the ground. At some point they had been stacked beside a large tree there. The tree has since come down, two young evergreens now grow from its old stump, and most of the stones lay buried in the soil heaped around them. By August 30 they lay on tarps, waiting to be identified.
Stones recovered at Coulter Cemetery, laid out on tarps for identification. Photographed August 30, 2026.
A county commissioner walked the ground with me for about two hours, and I met later with a township trustee. The plans they described include better access and signage, recovering every marker that can be recovered, the upkeep the law requires, and setting the recovered stones on a raised gravel bed. At Spurgeon and Rehobath cemeteries, recovered stones were set in concrete, but the trustee doubted a concrete truck could reach this ground by the lane in use today.
If you descend from the Spencers, Coulters or Channels, or have family papers that mention this ground, I would like to hear from you.
Sources: Coulter Cemetery, Clinton County WPA veterans’ grave plat, page 20 (scan: Clinton County Engineer’s GIS website). Ohio Soldiers Grave Registration Cards for James Spencer, John Coulter, William Coulter and James H. Channel (Ohio History Connection, State Archives Series 183; via Fold3). Clinton County cemetery records, 1798–1978, p. 348. Daughters of the American Revolution cemetery typescript (1950), p. 123. An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Clinton County, Ohio (Lake, Griffing & Stevenson, 1876), p. 12 (scan: Clinton County Engineer’s GIS website). The History of Clinton County, Ohio (W. H. Beers & Co., 1882), p. 1172, as quoted on Spencer’s card. Revolutionary War pension file W.4590 (Veterans Administration summary letter, April 29, 1938). Clinton Republican, March 27, 1857, p. 2 (via Newspapers.com). Wilmington Daily News, May 18, 1917, p. 3 (via Newspapers.com). Photographs by the author, August–September 2026.
