I got this off of the Blackford County,IN rootsweb mail list. Seems even 100
years ago there were people who wanted to farm over them.And many of these
people had only been dead 20-30 years.
By the way, this cemetery is called Schmidt cemetery and is still there.
Mark Davis
The Evening Herald, October 12, 1907, p4 c 2
Montpelier,Indiana
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 town 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.