The Butler County Historical Society is returning to North Side Cemetery next month for a deeper dive into the past.

“Digging Deeper: A Cemetery Tour” will take place at 10 and 11:15 a.m., as well as 12:30 p.m. Sept. 10 at the cemetery, 1002 North Main St.

This will be completely different from the May 21 cemetery walk put on by the historical society, in which historical re-enactors portray historical figures at their gravesides.

Jennifer Ford, executive director of the historical society said the “Digging Deeper” event won’t use actors or costumes.

"This is going to be more in-depth. We're taking small groups ‘over the hill’ to the old section where some notable Butler families of the past have plots. We'll focus on three — Sullivan, Mitchell, and Lowry,“ she said.

“Prominent families from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are buried there, and I think people will find it very interesting,” Ford said.

Ford; Margaret Hewitt, special collections librarian at the Butler Area Public Library and on the society board; and Deb Kruger, a history professor at Butler County Community College, will each discuss one of the families.

“There will be three of us at three different family plots telling their stories in much more depth than we could during the regular cemetery walk,” Ford said.

The families selected included the Sullivan/Shaw family because, according to Ford, the society’s headquarters is in the Lowrie-Sullivan-Shaw House at 123 W. Diamond St.

The Mitchell family included a number of lawyers — mainly in the 1800s — and, for several generations, the family history is one of success.

“But then tragedy struck again and again and again,” Ford said. “We won’t focus solely on those tragedies, but it is a fascinating story to share with people.”

Hewitt will speak about the Mitchell family.

“Lewis Mitchell was the family patriarch and a prominent early attorney and politician. He had five children, and his three sons also studied the law,” she said.

“In the late 1800s, they were poised to have a legal dynasty, but for a number of factors none of the sons went into the law or established a legal practice,” she said. “One of the daughters went West and had an interesting and rascally husband.”

Hewitt said she was able to use the library’s newspaper index of old Butler papers to extract information from marriage announcements, as well as estate records and census data to recreate the Mitchells’ history.

The Lowry family owned the Lowry House Hotel that was at the corner of Main and Jefferson streets. From 1850 to the early 1900s, Ford said, it was one of the top two or three hotels in the city, being especially popular with commercial travelers.

“William Lowry married into the Ziegler family; we’ll touch on them,” Ford said. “Their family plot is above and behind the Lowrys.’”

Ford said the section of the North Side Cemetery is relatively obscure and less accessible than the routes used for the annual cemetery walks.

“I walk my dogs there and came up with the fact there’s so many headstones with family names, and I knew the family names. Its an interesting section of the cemetery that people who casually walk the cemetery on their own or with us just don’t get to see,” she said.

“It’s got some of the most interesting headstone iconography I have seen in this cemetery. It is very unusual,” Ford added.

However, the upcoming “Digging Deeper” event takes place on rougher terrain than the cemetery walk and isn’t for people who may have mobility issues.

Still, the three tour groups, limited to a dozen people apiece, will meet at the cemetery chapel.

“We’re pitching this to people as a more in-depth view of Butler history than we can do on the cemetery walk,” Ford said. “We get to talk about the family instead of presenting one character from them.”

But she said “Digging Deeper” isn’t taking the place of the popular cemetery walk, which just had its ninth year.

“This is not a replacement; it’s an augmentation,” Ford said.

She also hopes it will spur talk of forming a group to focus on doing some grave maintenance in the somewhat neglected section of the cemetery.

“The descendants of these families have died out or moved away decades ago,” Ford said. “We’d like to form a committee to go out there and work on getting the graves looking good. People always want to get involved, and this is one way to use them.”