Assumption Mary Statue is Blessed at Catholic Cemetery
After the mass celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15, Father Dave Cornett and parishioners drove to the Catholic Cemetery to bless the new statue at the cemetery’s entrance. According to a dogma of the Catholic Church defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950, at the end of her life, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken up, body and soul, into heaven by God. The Barnesville Catholic Church is named after this solemn feast day. Therefore, the date, August 15, and its significance made it the perfect time to bless the statue and to pray for the people buried there.
Father Dave shared that the statue is of the Assumption Mary, and it was created in Ecuador.
The Original Gallagher & Sons Monuments assisted with the installation of the statue and the renovation of the cemetery’s sign. Due to the fear that sandblasting would damage the sign, Brady Gallagher scraped and sanded the sign by hand and then painted it. His father, Jason Gallagher, said that he spent hours over the winter working on the project.
The Catholic Cemetery was founded in 1888. The plot, where the cemetery is located, was the original site of the first Catholic Church in Barnesville. The little church was struck by lightning and completely destroyed.
The town would not permit the Catholic Church to start a cemetery on the lot. The town felt that there were enough cemeteries. So the Catholic Bishop of Columbus suggested that the Church bury just one person on the lot, and then the town could not stop them from having a cemetery. Matilda (Kress) Froehlich passed away approximately at midnight and was buried around 2:00 am, becoming the first person buried there, and the Catholic Church got its cemetery.
Matilda’s grandson, Charlie Froehlich, was the caretaker of the Catholic Cemetery, retiring from the position at the age of 87. Her great, great, great granddaughter, Lacy Burkhart, is creating a Mary Garden with the old statue on the family farm. The family farm has been in the Burkhart family, Lacy’s father’s family, for six generations.
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