Mound Cemetery ( Marietta , Ohio ) Mound Cemetery in Marietta , Ohio is a historic cemetery developed around the base of a prehistoric Adena burial mound known as the Great Mound or " Conus " . The city founders preserved the Great Mound from destruction by establishing the city cemetery around it in 1801 . The city of Marietta was developed in 1788 by migrant pioneers from Massachusetts , soon after the American Revolutionary War and organization of the Northwest Territory . Many of the founders were officers of the Revolutionary War who had received federal land grants for military services . Among high - ranking officers buried at the cemetery are generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper , who were founders of the Ohio Company of Associates ; as well as Commodore Abraham Whipple and Colonel William Stacy . The cemetery has the highest number of burials of American Revolutionary War officers in the country . Great Mound or Conus . The conical Great Mound at Mound Cemetery is part of an Ohio Hopewell culture mound complex known as the Marietta Earthworks . Archaeologists estiumate that it was built between 100 BC and 500 AD . Early European American settlers gave the structures Latin names . The complex includes the " Sacra Via " ( meaning " sacred way " ) , three walled enclosures , the " Quadranaou " , " Capitolium " ( meaning " capital " ) and at least two other additional platform mound s , and the " Conus " burial mound and its accompanying ditch and embankment . The complex was surveyed and drawn in 1838 by Samuel R . Curtis ( at the time a civil engineer for the state of Ohio ) . This survey was incorrectly attributed to Charles Whittlesey by E . G . Squier and E . H . Davis in their " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley " , published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1848 . At the time the complex " included a large square enclosure surrounding four flat - topped pyramidal mounds , another smaller square , and a circular enclosure with a large burial mound at its center . " The " Conus " mound was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 23 , 1973 as the Mound Cemetery Mound , site listing number 73001549 . In 1990 archaeologists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History excavated a section of the " Capitolium " mound and determined that the mound was definitely constructed by peoples of the Hopewell Culture . American Revolutionary War soldiers . The city of Marietta was developed in 1788 by migrant pioneers from Massachusetts , soon after the American Revolutionary War and organization of the Northwest Territory . The cemetery has the highest number of burials of American Revolutionary War officers in the country . The original pioneers , city founders from the Ohio Company of Associates , preserved the Great Mound from destruction by establishing the city cemetery around it . Many of the founders were officers of the Revolutionary War who had received federal land grants for military services . Among high - ranking officers buried at the cemetery are generals Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tupper , who were founders of the Ohio Company of Associates ; as well as Commodore Abraham Whipple and Colonel William Stacy . In 1825 , General Lafayette of France , who fought with the Americans during the Revolution , visited Marietta . He said of the city ' s veterans : " I knew them well . I saw them fighting the battles of their country … They were the bravest of the brave . Better men never lived . " The Washington County Historical Society compiled the following list of Revolutionary soldiers buried in Mound Cemetery : The pioneer physician , scientist , and historian , Samuel Prescott Hildreth ( 1783 - 1863 ) was also buried in Mound Cemetery ; his books provide insight into the early history of Marietta and the Northwest Territory , and the lives of the soldiers and early pioneer settlers .