Sharing today's bad news. Is there anyone connected to this family cemetery on the
list?
http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070830/NEWS/70830033...
Find a Grave listing.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&GRid=6647087&CRi...
L.A. Clugh
Tippecanoe County pioneer cemetery projects.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~intcpcrg/Index.html
Tippecanoe County Genealogy Society
http://www.rootsweb.com/~intcags/
From today's Lafayette Journal and Courier:
Vandals strike graveyard
By DAN SHAW
_dshaw(a)journalandcourier.com_ (mailto:dshaw@journalandcourier.com)
Vandals have knocked over several headstones in a small cemetery in south
Tippecanoe County within the past couple of weeks.
Bill Easterbrook, Lauramie Township trustee, said the groundskeeper who mows
the lawn at the Horney Cemetery found the damage Wednesday morning.
The cemetery lies northwest of the intersection of County Road 700 East and
South County Line Road.
Many of the headstones damaged were large. Some of them lay broken into three
or four pieces, which Easterbrook estimated may weigh as much as 400 pounds
each.
To rebuild the headstones, the township will have to hire a monument company,
which may cost as much as $1,500, he said. The money for that will come out
of the township's cemetery fund, which contains about $25,000, he said.
"All of these stones belong to some individual," he said. "And there is no
way for us to go back and look at the genealogy and say, 'Your stone was tipped
over, and we want you to pay us for it.'"
Lauramie Township contains 15 cemeteries. Seven of those are public, and
Easterbrook is responsible for maintaining them.
Easterbrook said the groundskeeper, Marvin Wheeler, goes to the cemetery
about every two weeks and believes the vandalism was committed after his last visit.
Teenagers likely caused the damage, he said.
He thinks they did it merely by pushing the stones over, noting that there
were no signs of that a crowbar or other tool was used.
Don Hurst, a sergeant with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Department, said
he too suspects that the vandals were teenagers, although he has no strong
leads to follow.
"It's kind of open at this point until we can get a little further to go
on,"
he said.
Most of the headstones in the cemetery bore the name of Horney and dated to
the 19th Century.
Last year, vandals damaged headstones at the Fairview Cemetery, also in
Lauramie Township, according to Easterbrook.
No suspects were ever arrested for that crime, he said.