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Millville latest stop on summer cemetery tours for OC Historical Association

By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 18 August 2025 at 10:15 am

Photos courtesy of Susan Starkweather Miller

SHELBY – About 50 people attended Sunday’s evening tour of the Millville Cemetery in the Town of Shelby. Orleans County Historian Catherine Cooper is shown leading the tour of the cemetery.

Millville is one of four cemeteries in Orleans County named to the National Register of Historic Places.

The most prominent monument marks the grave for Asa Hill, a Civil War soldier and prominent local farmer. His family put up the large monument, where local lore suggests he is looking towards Sanderson Road, keeping watch on the family farm.

Catherine Cooper and Alice Zacher, retired Shelby historian, are shown inside the chapel at the cemetery. Zacher helped get the cemetery listed on the National Register in 2007.

The Millville Cemetery was established in 1871 on East Shelby Road. The monuments and Victorian funerary art reflect the prosperity of the community back when it was home to three sawmills, gristmill and turning mill, according to the description of the site on the National Register.

The wood frame chapel has a Medina Sandstone foundation. It was built in 1894 into a hill and also served as a receiving vault and office.

Many prominent local residents are buried at Millville, including this large grave marker for Arnold Gregory, who left money to start a hospital in Albion. Some of the names of the family plots, such as Dresser and Pask, are names of roads in the community.

The Orleans County Historical Association has two more cemetery tours at 6 p.m. on Sundays in August:

  • The tour on Aug. 24 Greenwood Cemetery, 16670 Roosevelt Highway/Route 18, Kendall, will focus on the first Norwegian settlement in the United States in 1825 in Kendall. Orleans County historian Catherine Cooper will lead this tour.
  • Aug. 31 at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, 581 East Ave., Albion, will conclude the series of tours. Catherine Cooper and Sue Starkweather Miller will lead the tour, which will include a visit to the chapel to view the beautiful interior stained glass windows, and stops at several prominent gravesites.