Story by Derek Kreider, Akron Beacon Journal • 2w • 5 min read. msn

Hundreds of souls rest at Schneider Park, interred on the grounds when it was used as a graveyard for the Summit County Infirmary and, before that, a "poor farm."

Jane Greenland's nine-year mission to gain official recognition for the buried dead was realized when Akron City Council, at its March 2 meeting, unanimously approved a resolution introduced by Ward 4 Councilwoman Jan Davis urging the administration to rename the park Schneider Memorial Park in honor of those buried there.

City spokeswoman Stephanie Marsh said via email that Akron Mayor Shammas Malik's administration supports the name change and plans to initiate the process. She said the administration will work with Davis and others on an official renaming event.

Greenland lives directly across from the park. She tears up when explaining why it was important to her to get recognition for people buried there.

"They're people and they have a soul, and God loves them and they're good spirits," she said. "They had a hard life. Every single one of those people had a really hard life."

The site served as the burial grounds for the old Summit County Infirmary, built in the mid-1860s on the corner of Mull and Exchange where Westminster Presbyterian Church now stands. It operated until 1919. Before that, it was a poor farm — where people with no financial means could work the land and stay.

When the infirmary was demolished, the remaining residents moved to a facility in Munroe Falls. An 1868 report written to the Ohio Board of Charities by inspector A.G. Byers details the infirmary's hellish conditions, where some lived outside in wooden pens.

“In one, there was an insane man whose hip and knee joints were entirely anchylosed,″ Byers said. ″He was entirely naked and performed locomotion by sliding about on his posterior with the aid of his hands … In the other pen were four females, one a miserable driveling idiot, eating its own filth, and the other three insane. They were also all of them entirely naked, and their condition was indescribably pitiable.″

University of Akron Anthropology Professor Emerita Carolyn Behrman said 308 death certificates rescued by retired Summit County library archivist Michael Elliot detail eight years of burials. The city later used the land as a potter's field, she said.

From above, the graves are clearly visible — their ghostly shadows a darker green contrasting against the surrounding grass.