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Historical Marker - Harwood Cemetery. This peaceful parcel of land, named for the family who donated it, is the final resting place of a key figure in the founding of Ypsilanti as well as prominent participants in the Underground Railroad. William Webb Harwood came to the area from Palmyra, New York with his wife, Sally, and their children in 1824. With Augustus Woodward and John Stewart, Harwood platted the village of Ypsilanti. In 1929, he erected a dam and established a gristmill and, the following year, built Ypsilanti’s first schoolhouse. Moving to Pittsfield Township in the mid-1830s, Harwood became a supporter of the abolitionist movement and offered sanctuary to escaping slaves. In this endeavor he was joined by Asher Aray, a man of mixed race whose family farmed east of the Harwoods on the Chicago Road (now US-12). In 1853, Aray sheltered a group of 28 slaves whose flight to freedom was documented nationwide. The Arays and their relatives, the Days, are both buried here in an unusual show of tolerance for the time. Harwood Cemetery, once the central burial ground for Pittsfield Township, also contains the remains of Robert and William Geddes, two of the area’s original land patentees. –Washtenaw County PI-53 Historical Marker

 

Dwight Burdette, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons