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Surnames: Schmidt, Thornburg
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.indiana.counties...
Message Board Post:
The Evening Herald, October 12, 1907, p4 c 2
Wants the Title to Graveyard Quieted
Cemetery at Dundee may be Converted into a Farm
Thomas L Thornburg vs William Schmidt and others is the title of an interesting unit filed
this week in the Blackford circuit and the outcome of which will be closely watched.
The plaintiff is seeking to quiet the title to an acre of ground in Washington township
which years ago was used as a public burying grounds and wherein the bodies of a number of
the county's pioneers are interred. Back in Civil War times about the year 1863,
Wilhelm Schmidt had a cemetery laid out near the worn of Dundee by the county surveyor.
Afterwards he undertook to deed the land to certain trustees, but through error the title
was never clear. At his death the property came into the possession of his heirs and
passed through the hands of Michael Schmidt to Thomas L Thornburg as an entirety and
without any reservation.
Thornburg now seeks to quiet the title to the acre of ground in order that he may
transform the burying grounds into farming land. In all there are about 150 old residents
buried there, including the original owner Wilhelm Schmidt. If the title is quieted as
prayed for, residents who have relatives buried there probably will either have to have
the bodies exhumed or pay the owner sufficient rents to keep him from plowing up their
last resting places and sowing it in farm products, it is said.
-Hartford City Times Gazette.