Inscribing Sarah McIntire's place in Zanesville history

Chris Crook, Zanesville Times Recorder
·3 min read
The City of Zanesville Parks and Recreation Department placed a plaque at the grave of Sarah McIntire, wife of Zanesville founder John McIntire. Her gravestone, shared with her second husband, has weathered to the point it can't be read.
The City of Zanesville Parks and Recreation Department placed a plaque at the grave of Sarah McIntire, wife of Zanesville founder John McIntire. Her gravestone, shared with her second husband, has weathered to the point it can't be read.

ZANESVILLE − Had Sarah McIntire lived "in this day of woman's rights, she would not have been relegated to obscurity," wrote Helene Louisa Sullivan in 1892. Sullivan wrote a chapter on Zanesville founder John McIntire in Pioneer Period and Pioneer People of Fairfield County, Ohio. She gave significant space to a woman who her more famous husband "owed his success to."

Sarah was laid to rest in Zanesville's Woodlawn Cemetery, next to her second husband David Young, a Methodist minister. Their gravestone still stands, an obelisk some 10 or so feet tall, but it is so weather-beaten the words are scarcely readable. To keep Sarah from slipping further into obscurity, the city has erected a plaque in her memory in front of her gravesite. "We want people to be able to come in the cemetery and know that she is buried here," said Howard Bailey, the city's Parks, Recreation and Cemeteries supervisor.

John McIntire worked for Sarah's father Ebenezer Zane while Zane cut Zane's Trace across southeast Ohio. As part of his payment, McIntire was gifted 640 acres at the confluence of the Muskingum and Licking rivers. His settlement eventually became Zanesville. Sarah joined him in the summer of 1800, rafting down the Ohio River and up the Muskingum River from Wheeling, where the two had met and married. Their marriage followed a tumultuous courtship; Sarah's parents didn't approve of the marriage between their 16-year-old daughter and 30-year-old McIntire. Sarah's parents didn't even attend their nuptials, said Pete Cultice, president of Muskingum County History. The Zanes eventually came around, and McIntire's place in Zanesville history was secured.

Sarah's place is less well known. She was both strong willed and determined − evidenced by marrying McIntire against her parent's wishes, but also forgiving and kind, said Cultice. She took on the responsibility of raising John's daughter, Amelia, who came into the world because of John's extra-marital affair.

Her compassion and caring went beyond raising a child that wasn't her own. She was "a mother indeed to the homeless and friendless, having no family of her own she adopted into her heart and home not less than 12 children, training them for useful lives, morally and religiously, surrounding them with every comfort of a happy home and sending them forth fully equipped to fill honorable positions in the world," wrote Sullivan.

The McIntires welcomed everyone to their home, it was a de facto hotel during Zanesville's wilderness days before lodging was established. Sarah "was a notable housewife, and a splendid cook," Sullivan wrote, and "having established themselves in their forest home, they dispensed hospitality with a liberal hand, all being welcome to their dinner table within the sound of their dinner horn."

After John died, Sarah remarried David Young, a minister, and later helped establish the first Methodist church in Zanesville. She funded the construction of both the Second Street and South Street M.E. churches in the city. "Sarah McIntire was truly an extraordinary woman," Cultice said. She died on March 8, 1854.

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This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Inscribing Sarah McIntire's place in Zanesville history