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Author: bjct1
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Classification: queries
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http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.indiana.counties...
Message Board Post:
My aunt said as a young girl they went out on Lockport Road to the cemetery there....they
would decorate grandma mom's grave there, and grandma's grandparents graves.
As a child, I lived not far from Lockport Road and knew of the Cemetery there, named Grand
View Cemetery. Grandview is quite large, and I spent a couple days just walking around it
before some worker showed up to dig a grave, and I talked to them. One of them had keys
to the office, and they still had a burial record there with every burial since the
opening day of that cemetery! None of my people were there. When I was dismayed, the
cemetery man said...you know...some people get this cemetery and Mt Pleasant Cemetery
mixed up.....it is just on down the road, down the Old Riley Road.
Some days later, I was in the VCPL and said something to David Lewis....and David started
the memory bank running...suddenly he walks back across the room and said...."you
know don't you...that the town of Riley was called Lockport because of the Wabash and
Erie Canal had locks there and it had something to do with the canal water storage lakes
out east of Riley (Lockport)." And then my wife, Norma says....that her grandmother
was buried in Mt Pleasant and it is on the old Riley Road...wonder if the road was
Lockport Road once....David Lewis said...well you know that the old canal ran down what
was 9 1/2 to Hulman then cut southeast toward Margaret went west to about 25th and
southwest again toward Riley....and when the Canal was filled in, Lockport Road followed
the old canal route!
I went to Mt Pleasant and within an hour found all the tombstones.
Mt Pleasant records for the "old section" all were destroyed, they were in a
tool shed that burnt in the 1950's..
That worker in Grand View Cemetery told me that a lot of people get Grand View Cemetery
and Mt Pleasant Cemetery mixed up.....Today the road name at Grand View is still Lockport
Road.....
The name of the road that passes Mt Pleasant is called Old Riley Road. Lockport ends at
19th and Margaret Ave today.......then the Riley Road begins at 25th and Margaret.... At
one time that part of Margaret was called Lockport Road, and it continued from 19th to
25th, then SE to Lockport, now the town of Riley!
You know the first railroads (and some still today) ran/run along the route of the
canal....they built the tracks on the "tow-paths" that the oxen, mules, and
horses used to tow the barges along the old canal.
The RR that crosses 91/2 & Wabash is still along that route at that point going thru
Terre Haute, Indiana. In old maps of TH, found at IN State Archive, show the canal route
through Terre Haute..
David Bonnett, 2013
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