Perhaps if the Wilcox brothers died a land search on the farm property in
the county recorder's office, one of the deeds
might give a legal description of the actual location and dimension in the
cemetery. sometimes a deed as the land passes from one owner to another
will show land deeded except for the"buryal ground" and sometimes have a
descripyion. It would be worth a try anyway.
Pat Harris
----- Original Message -----
From: "L.A. CLUGH" <Clugh_LA(a)msn.com>
To: "INPCRP-L(a)rootsweb.com" <INPCRP(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2006 11:59 AM
Subject: [INPCRP] Colfax Story Dec. 24-2006
A story from yesterdays Lafayette Journal & Courier., page B4
Another cemetery destroyed by owners. Every County has them.
LA. Clugh
http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061224/NEWS/61224033...
Here is the text. It will only be readable for 5 more days.
-----------
December 24, 2006
By NICOLE BROOKS
The Frankfort Times
COLFAX -- Robert Wilcox stood on Clinton County Road 880 West in this
Clinton
County town and turned his eyes toward a plowed field.
Here, on this half-acre of land, is where his great-great-grandfather is
buried.
But no one has been able to find the exact spot where John Franklin Crick,
born
1837, was laid to rest in 1910.
The headstones belonging to the 30 to 40 graves in this small cemetery,
named Davis
Cemetery, were moved in the 1960s, Wilcox said. Today no trace
of the burial site remains. A map listing all the known cemeteries in
Clinton County includes Davis, but the word "gone" appears next to it.
"It's like they never existed," Wilcox said of the people buried there.
"It's a horrible feeling."
Wilcox wants to find the headstones and return them to their original
places. If
that is not possible, he wants "Davis Cemetery" proclaimed on a
plaque stationed on the small hill.
One day, all who know about the cemetery will be gone, he said. He fears a
new home
could be built on that spot. Someone digging into the ground to
build a basement could churn up Wilcox's relative.
Growing up in Clarks Hill, Wilcox visited his grandmother in Colfax. Every
year on
Memorial Day they would visit Davis Cemetery and leave flowers on
the grave of John Franklin Crick, a Civil War veteran.
Grandpa Crick, as Wilcox calls him, enlisted in the Army on Aug. 19, 1862,
according to his discharge papers in the Clinton County Recorder's Office.
He retired a private.
Crick was wounded in 1862 in Tennessee, Wilcox said, and spent two years
recovering
before he was strong enough to come home.
Crick died in Perry Township on Oct. 31, 1910, at the age of 72. He was
buried Nov.
2. But Davis Cemetery does not appear on the death certificate
or in his obituary, published Nov. 1, 1910, in The Frankfort News.
Wilcox acknowledges that memory is fallible, but he is positive Crick is
buried
there.
"I'm not sure you'll ever be able to find out who's buried there,"
said
Joan Bohm, a county historian and librarian for the Clinton County
Historical Society.
In the 1960s, Bohm and a team of genealogists cataloged every known
cemetery in the
county. She believes Davis Cemetery existed, but no
documents detailing who is buried there have been found.
Wilcox's brother, Keith, doesn't remember the cemetery.
However, Keith, who was in the bulldozing business, does recall landowner
Joseph
Bell contacting him in the 1960s.
"(He) had a pile of stuff he wanted me to bury."
<
http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061224/NEWS/612240330/
-1/ARCHIVE>
Keith dug a hole in the woods in which to dump the stuff. A headstone
tumbled out
of the bundle of weeds and old brush he was burying.
Keith didn't realize at the time that he was burying the headstone
belonging to
his great-great-grandfather's grave.
The cemetery has been unmarked and planted in soybeans for 40 years,
Robert Wilcox
said.
"Now my brother and I are the only ones who know where the headstones and
graves are," he said.
Joseph Bell is deceased, but the land remains in the Bell family. The
Wilcox
brothers have never gone to talk to them about the cemetery, they
say, because they don't want the family to feel harassed.
Dismantling a cemetery on private property became illegal in Indiana only
five or
six years ago, said Jeannie Regan, cemetery registry coordinator for
the State Department of Natural Resources. Hoosiers were not even required
to keep track of cemeteries until 1939, Regan said.
In the case of Davis Cemetery, Regan said she would recommend a plaque be
placed on
the half acre. It would be nearly impossible, she said, to replace
the headstones.
Wilcox believes the people buried deep in that soil deserve more than to
be plowed
over and forgotten.
He can still see the outlines of the graves in the ground, he said.
"Everything leaves its mark"
-------------------------------
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