Sheridan Township Cemetery, Clare County, Michigan: How to Search It

A Small Township Cemetery With a Big Naming Problem

Start here, because it trips people up: the cemetery most researchers are hunting for as “Sheridan Cemetery” in Clare County, Michigan is officially Woods Cemetery. Sheridan Township itself lists it that way on its own services page, right alongside its sister cemetery, Thompson Cemetery. Locals still call it Sheridan Cemetery or Sheridan/Wood Cemetery often enough that both names turn up in genealogy indexes, so if you’re searching a database, try Woods first and Sheridan as a fallback.

It sits on South Cornwell Avenue, between Dover and Adams Roads, right on the boundary line between Sheridan and Grant townships, with a small creek — McCurran Creek — running along the edge. I’ve driven out to plenty of these little Thumb-and-central-Michigan cemeteries, and this one fits the pattern exactly: no gate, no office, no sexton on staff, just a fenced plot of ground off a country road that most passing drivers wouldn’t notice.

Local research puts the total at twenty-one burials — a genuinely small number for a cemetery that was active for close to four decades. The earliest recorded burial is Eveline Wood, who died in 1868, the year after Michigan’s statewide vital records law took effect. Barbary Wood followed in 1869 at age 31, and three more members of the Wood family were buried there between 1875 and 1882 — which is where the cemetery’s name actually comes from. The last known burial is Mary Roe, who died in 1904 at 27. After that, the record appears to go quiet.

Why a Cemetery This Small Exists at All

Sheridan Township organized alongside the rest of Clare County during the pine-lumber years of the 1870s and 80s, when families were scattered across new farmsteads rather than clustered in a single village. A rural burying ground like Woods Cemetery wasn’t run by a church or a city — it was almost certainly a neighborhood plot, donated or set aside informally on private land, serving the handful of families living nearby. That’s a common pattern across Michigan’s less-populated townships: a cluster of related families, a patch of high ground, and a burial or two a decade until the land around it filled in with something else.

Michigan law has treated cemeteries like this one in two different ways historically. An 1869 act (still on the books, since amended) let groups of citizens organize formal rural cemetery associations — private corporations set up specifically to buy, plat, and maintain burial ground. A separate 1895 law put township boards on the hook for any cemetery within their borders that isn’t privately owned or run by a city or village. Whichever track Woods Cemetery followed, the practical result today is the same: it’s a retired cemetery, no longer accepting new burials, maintained at whatever level the township’s budget allows — which, as a 2023 local piece on the site’s condition noted, isn’t always much. Overgrown grass, leaning stones, and hard-to-read inscriptions are typical, not a sign the cemetery has been abandoned outright.

Where to Search a Burial Now

1. Check Find a Grave first. Woods Cemetery has its own listed entry (Cemetery ID 1989), and it’s the fastest way to see whether a specific name has already been photographed and transcribed by a volunteer.
2. Try BillionGraves as a second pass. Its GPS-tagged headstone photos sometimes catch stones that Find a Grave’s listing hasn’t, especially for cemeteries this small.
3. Contact Sheridan Township directly if the online listings come up empty. The township clerk’s office is the closest thing this cemetery has to a records-keeper, and can tell you whether burial records exist beyond what’s carved on the stones themselves.
4. Go to the Clare County Clerk for the death record itself once you have a name and an approximate year — the cemetery marker and the county’s death registration are two separate paper trails, and the second one usually has more detail (cause of death, birthplace, informant) than a headstone ever will.
5. Ask the Harrison Area Genealogical Society. Local genealogical societies in Michigan’s smaller counties have often done their own cemetery surveys, sometimes decades before Find a Grave existed, and may hold notes that never made it online.

If the Name Still Isn’t There

A missing name at Woods Cemetery doesn’t necessarily mean your ancestor was buried somewhere far away. Check Thompson Cemetery next — Sheridan Township’s other burying ground, on Rodgers Avenue north of Beaverton Road — since families with land in the township sometimes had a choice of which plot to use. After that, widen the search to neighboring townships within Clare County; rural families crossed township lines for burial more often than you’d expect, usually to be near a church or a relative’s homestead rather than the nearest surveyed boundary. And keep the possibility of an unmarked family cemetery on private land in mind — Michigan has thousands of small plots that were never platted, never picked up by a township, and never made it into any online index at all. A county plat map from the right decade, cross-referenced against land ownership, is sometimes the only way to spot one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Sheridan Cemetery the same as Woods Cemetery? Yes. The Cornwell Avenue cemetery in Sheridan Township is officially Woods Cemetery, also known locally as Sheridan Cemetery.

How many burials are in Sheridan (Woods) Cemetery? Local research indicates twenty-one, spanning 1868 to 1904, with several members of the Wood family among them.

Where exactly is the cemetery, and can I visit? On South Cornwell Avenue between Dover and Adams Roads, on the Sheridan/Grant township line. It’s an open, unstaffed rural cemetery.

Who maintains a small rural cemetery like this one? Michigan township boards are responsible for cemeteries within their borders that aren’t privately or municipally owned, though funding for a retired site like this one is typically modest.

I can’t find my ancestor listed at this cemetery. What else can I try? Check Thompson Cemetery, Sheridan Township’s other burying ground, then widen out to the Clare County Clerk’s records and the Harrison Area Genealogical Society’s local indexes.