Marietta’s Mound Cemetery is centered on the ancient Conus Mound, with its beautiful ditch and ring. The Conus is a burial structure, probably the best surviving example of the Adena tradition’s large, conical, ringed mounds. It has not been investigated by archaeologists, but the Reverend Manasseh Cutler, one of the town’s founders, wrote this about his early attempt:

An opening being made at the summit of the great mound, there were found the bones of an adult in a horizontal position, covered with a flat stone. Beneath this skeleton were three stones placed vertically at small and different distances, but no bones were discovered. That this venerable monument might not be defaced, the opening was closed without further search.

Cutler’s respectful closing of the mound was typical of the Marietta attitude. By 1837, the town had fenced the cemetery, sewn the monument with grass, and built a stone staircase to the top. All around they had buried their own dead, many of them honored veterans of the American Revolution.

The Conus stands 30 feet tall; its surrounding ditch and ring accent its height and lovely profile. Toward the northwest, the wall and ditch level out to an earth “bridge” – an obvious entryway. A swell in the ground extending from this point once led out to the neighboring square enclosure.

Nearby in the cemetery are memorials to soldiers of the Revolution, and later graves, including that of Benjamin Tupper who once mustered troops for the Civil War at the Quadranaou.