Hannah Spelman
1763-1807

Bryant Number: 864
Type of Memorial: Sandstone headstone
Stonecarver: Unknown

Inscription:
Sacred
to the memory of
Mrs. Hannah Spelman
Wife of
Timothy Spelman Esq.
who died March
22 1807 in the
45 year of her
age.

Come children view your Mother’s grave,
Lo here her body lies
Believe in Christ your soul to save
And live beyo[n]d the skies

Commentary: Hannah Hayes Spelman was one of Granville’s original settlers, along with her husband Timothy and their children. Hannah’s 1807 grave has the distinction of being marked by the oldest known headstone in the Old Colony Burying Ground. Hannah’s was not the earliest burial (there were several in 1806), but those earlier burials either have no headstones at all today, or they have headstones that were probably replacements or otherwise not as old as the grave itself.

An unfortunate fact about 19th-century frontier history is that often more is known about the men of that era than about the women, whose contributions all too often remained in the background. In the case of Hannah Spelman, we know that her husband Timothy Spelman was a veteran of the American Revolution who some years later took a leadership role in the founding of Granville, Ohio, and in the migration there and early development of the young settlement. One can imagine that Timothy’s prominence would have drawn Hannah into the limelight as well, perhaps casting her as the female expression of the courage, grit, and enterprise it must have taken to leave one’s secure home in Massachusetts and commit oneself to a wholly new life in an unsettled and unfamiliar place. We know that Hannah shepherded a family of seven children through the 46-day migration to the Ohio frontier, and that she and Timothy built the first frame house in Granville in 1808 (earlier structures were log cabins). The small house stood on the northeast corner of Broadway and Green St. (now Pearl St.), probably in the vicinity of the current parking lot on the west side of the Granville Inn. To the east and north of that homestead, Hannah and Timothy presided over farmland of hundreds of acres. The prominent status of the family is without question.

Hannah’s simple sandstone headstone in the Old Colony has not suffered breakage over its two centuries, but has weathered significantly, now nearly illegible. Just to the right (south) of Hannah’s stone is a later (post-1886) military-issue marble marker memorializing Timothy and his service during the American Revolution.

Find a Grave link: No record found (02-11-2026)