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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Ind. Gov't. - "Homeowners with cemeteries in yards keep history alive"
Long, really interesting feature story about pioneer cemeteries, by Will Higgins of the Indianapolis Star. Plus a nice slide show by Joe Vitta. Some quotes:
Pioneer cemeteries are by law the responsibility of township trustees, who care for them to varying degrees. Some cut the grass a few times a summer and leave it at that.But in some townships, such as Washington and Warren, the trustees have gone further.
In the 1990s, Washington Township spent about $100,000 to repair headstones in its half-dozen pioneer cemeteries (the headstone restorer "was a trip, had one of those beards, looked like one of the ZZ Top guys," Peterson recalled); the trustee also researched precisely who's buried in the cemeteries.
"Every so often we get a call from someone coming through who wants to know where their great-great-great grandfather is," said Frank Short, the current trustee, "and we have an inventory and can direct them."
In Warren, trustee Jeff Bennett hired graduate students from IUPUI to research his dead. They discovered, among other things, that there was good reason Henry Brady's headstone was taller than the others -- the man was a doer: By the time he died (after 90 years, eight months and 17 days, it says on his headstone), he'd farmed, run a tavern, platted the town of Cumberland and served in the state legislature.
The plan is to use some of the grad students' research to help teach Indiana history to local fourth-graders.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 26, 2011 07:51 PM
Posted to Indiana Government