Early settlers to the Quihi area came from Germany, primarily Wuertemberg, Hanover, Alsace, Baden, and East Frisia. They were predominantly Christian, and their Christian faith was a tremendous help and getting through the many difficulties and adversities they faced on the frontier.
Belonging to a Christian Church gave settlers a strong measure of community and normalcy. It provided familiar elements from their past lives, where they had left behind Church congregations regularly worshipping and dedicated sanctuary buildings, and burial of loved ones in adjoining cemeteries.
The Bethlehem Lutheran Church founded in 1852, established this cemetery alongside their church building, consecrating it in 1864. The first recorded burial was Frederick Boehle on August 24th, 1867,. Anna Heichmann Newmann was the last person buried on September 26th, 1936.
Since family plots did not exist in those days, graves were arranged chronologically and numbered in church records. Most records are written in old German dialect that few people can translate, but show that 104 people are buried in the cemetery not all graves can be located and identified. Many had wooden markers that have long since disappeared.
Some graves are unmarked and not recorded. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed 12 children who were buried quickly in the southeast part of the cemetery. Their unmarked graves are evidenced by aligned surface depressions indicative of wooden caskets rotting away from these burials.
Two graves are located just outside the original cemetery boundaries, because the deceased had met violent deaths. Rules at the time would not allow persons involved in criminal activities or suicide to be buried in a consecrated church cemetery. These graves are aligned in a north-south direction, rather than facing East in the traditional manner of all other graves.
While the Bethlehem Lutheran Church Cemetery endures as originally laid out, the current sanctuary building to the south replaced the original structure next to the cemetery in 1914.
Medina County Historical Commission
2019