Ottawa County restored the poor-farm cemetery at Eastmanville

Eastmanville Farm is now a 229-acre Ottawa County park with open fields, trails, and Grand River shoreline. The county also keeps two reminders of the land’s earlier use: a 1930s barn and the cemetery from its years as the county poor farm, where residents in need received housing and work.

The Parks Commission supported a community proposal to restore the cemetery in 2009. By June 2010, the work included new grave markers, a crushed-stone path, a picket fence, benches, and landscaping. New signs were planned to explain the cemetery and the restoration.

Ottawa County’s own report records the dedication on July 10, 2010. That restoration is why a visitor can now read this quieter part of the property alongside the barn and working landscape. The park offers a pleasant place to walk while keeping the county’s old system of public care in view.

That public setting matters. The cemetery is not separated from the old farm’s story in a private archive; it sits within the county park, where the surviving barn, fields, and trails give the memorial a physical setting.