Resent-Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 21:03:46 -0800 (PST)
From: "Lois Mauk" <lawofficeinformationsystem(a)worldnet.att.net>
Old-To: "INPCRP" <INPCRP-L(a)rootsweb.com>,
"John Ragle" <jlr(a)chemserv.chem.umass.edu>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 23:20:02 -0500
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Subject: [INPCRP-L] Re: Hearings on Cemetery Bills
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Dr. John Ragle has given me permission to post this message to the INPCRP
group.
From: John Ragle <jlr(a)chemserv.chem.umass.edu>
I am not a member of the INPCRP group. You may, of course, forward this
letter.
In this regard, I have been somewhat active on this matter previously. I
wrote a letter to the Indiana Governor's Office about a year ago, and also
responded to an article in the Indianapolis Star (?I am not sure this is the
right name) about an incident in which remains had been removed by some
forensic arm of the Indiana Government and a cemetery itself had been
blacktopped.
As I indicated in my first note to you, my concern has been somewhat
heightened by personal experience. My 2nd greatgrandparents were among the
original settlers of Raglesville (Peter Ragle and Margaret Wadsworth Ragle)
when it was platted in 1835 by Ozias Crooke. Ragles of various flavors were
active in this area for many years. I visited the Raglesville cemetery once
in about 1965 and again in 1996. I was aghast at the changes which had
occured . . . willful destruction of headstones (including those of some of
my family), and general lack of maintenance. I phoned all over southern
Indiana trying to locate the actual holders of the deed to this property,
including Ron Beasley who is the local caretaker in Raglesville, and never
found anyone who would admit to ownership.
Mr. Beasley has a plot plan of the old cemetery. My immediate family has a
family plot in the old section, and I was looking for permission to mount a
small stainless steel plaque or something similar, so that the identities of
these people would not be lost, as they surely will be in another few
decades. Members of my family were co-owners of the first general store, as
well as the first postmaster, and were also very active in bringing the
Methodist Church to the area. The original DePauw Chapel, later moved to
Burns City, was built on land donated by my greatgrandfather and his younger
brother.
I don't have any photographs which show 'before and after.' All the photos
I have are of individual headstones, taken in 1996. Sorry. I asked Ron
Beasley what had happened to the 'tipped' monuments, and he said that he
just carried them out and piled them in back of the maintenance shed.
Rather than making an issue of a particular cemetery, I would prefer to
laud the efforts of people like those at the Crane, who took the time to
collect and print listings of the 30-odd old cemeteries inside the
reservation.
In this modern day, it would be a useful task for someone to walk into the
old cemeteries carrying a GPS receiver. A GPS receiver can pinpoint the
location to within 100 feet or so, for recording purposes.
In poking around the Elnora/Odon/Raglesville area, we found several
grown-over cemeteries in which the markers are made from the local
limestone and are suffering the effects of acid rain. Although these are
not in danger of being plowed up or paved over, they too will vanish.
The question is, "how to find and identify these crypto-cemeteries?" There
is no substitute for local involvement...we found that the locals,
especially the oldsters, were quite knowledgeable. But also, people who
have moved away may have knowledge of a family plot. For example, I know of
a Sims family plot in the Odon area which is deep in the woods and
inaccessible except by bushwhacking. The exact location is known to the
descendents of Starlin Sims, a 'country squire' of the Raglesville area in
the years just post-civil war. The counties nowadays have many people who
are formally involved in the general genealogy of the areas, through web
sites, etc. and these people are reachable through email and through the
list servers as well as their web sites.
Although I reside in Masschusetts, I am concerned about Indiana's pioneer
cemeteries in general, and particularly about the old half of the cemetery
in Raglesville, just south of Odon, in which a number of my ancestors are
interred. Here the problem arises from the fact that the original community
has been displaced almost entirely by a Mennonite community, and they wish
to 'recycle' the old cemetery because they are running out of space. So,
while this is indirectly a result of farming pressure [not wanting to take
land out of service] it is more a matter of "who cares? these people's
descendents have long moved on."
I believe it is generally 'indifference' rather than 'greed' which
motivates
the destruction of pioneer cemeteries. In that case, responses to proposals
to destroy an old cemetery should be sought assiduously from those directly
concerned, with secondary support from state law. Such law could:
(a) mandate a substantial effort be made to contact descendents,
(b) propose a concrete way to record the information and layout of the
cemetery, and
(c) mandate proper 'archiving' of headstones and remains in a dignified way.
Such a law would have to carefully define 'substantial effort,' 'concrete
methods of recording,' and 'proper archiving.'
I would personally be satisfied if the graves from the cemetery mentioned
above were recorded on a permanent plinth or historical marker at the site,
and if a high-quality photographic record of headstones were made, with
exact site description, and provided to concerned descendents and family
archivists. The plot of turf itself is not particularly an issue in my mind.
I would comment further that amateur cemetery listings exist for many old
plots. Some of these are of excellent quality, e.g. those provided by the
Crane Naval Weapons Depot in Burns City. Others are of poorer quality, taken
by boy scouts or by individuals and held as typewritten sheets in local
libraries. Some considerable field work remains to be done. I know from
personal experience that the cemetery listings for Raglesville held in the
Carnegie Library in Washington, IN contain factual errors.
The first stage in this project is, therefore, to locate and identify old
cemeteries and to walk the sites carefully and inventory them. The law
should mandate accomplishment of this task by imposing a freeze [with severe
penalties] on destruction of such sites for a reasonable time interval. Much
of this work already exists in various stages of completion, but all should
be reviewed. It should start from 'the grass roots' at the township level,
and funnel into the counties.
I have a modest genealogy site for the Ragle family mounted at
http://jlragle.chem.umass.edu/index.htm
which includes the [unfinished] text of a family history, as well as a
hypertext family tree for about 4,000 family members.
Dr. J. L. Ragle
<jlr(a)chemserv.chem.umass.edu>
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Quote from William Gladstone (1809-1897), three-time Prime Minister of England
and Victorian contemporary of Benjamin Disraeli:
"Show me the manner in which a nation or community
cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical
exactness the tender mercies of its people, their
respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty
to high ideals."