Lost Cemeteries and Discovered Unknown Graves

Yesterday's Evansville Courier & Press ran another interesting story on lost & discovered grave sites that seem to be found by accident by contractors doing some sort of construction/excavating work.  Read the online article at this link:

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jan/26/there-are-unknown-grave-sites-among-us/

"According to state law, anyone who finds human remains or artifacts must notify the Department of Natural Resources within two days. So when a historic cemetery is unearthed, Jeannie Regan-Dinius hears about it. She is the cemetery registry coordinator at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' division of historic preservation and archaeology."

The article mentions the SHAARD cemetery database - this "database is part of the Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Database, also known as SHAARD. The database is available online at http://bit.ly/WrOp8D. From that page, click the 'Enter SHAARD as a guest' link to access the database."  You will be required to accept their terms and conditions and then on the next page you will select the survey type... select "cemetery registry"  I just entered Vanderburgh County & Perry Township in the search box and got all the cemeteries registered in that township.  One is listed as "Forgotten Cemetery" dubbed by Glenda Trapp when we (TSGS) copied the cemetery in 1983 (that was nearly 30 years ago) by Glenda, Bonnie Fehd and her son Andrew with John G. West.  This was published in the Vanderburgh two-volume set of cemetery inscription books that many TSGS members helped transcribe grave markers in the smaller cemeteries of the county.  These books are for sale and still available.  The page of who is buried there was photocopied from our publication.  There is a military marker possibly from the Civil War in this "forgotten cemetery."

This SHAARD cemetery database is a great registry for Indiana's cemeteries and hopefully will help prevent some from being lost, forgotten or destroyed.

- Compiled by JGWest

Cemetery Records Published by TSGS

From Don Counts

This is my wife, Betty Neale Counts family cemetery.

NEALE KING CEMETERY

I found the site while searching for the Mt Sinai cemetery and noticed the occupants were not listed: 

http://www.ingenweb.org/invanderburgh/cemeteries/nealekingcem.htm

Neale - King Cemetery

Old Henderson Road, 3.3 miles S. of Deusner Road

Union Township, Vanderburgh County, IN

If you have any further information on "occupants" in this cemetery, please send it in.

"This cemetery is located in Union Twp., Vanderburgh Co., Indiana. It is on the Old Henderson Rd. 3.3 miles south of Deusner Road. It is next to a red barn and is enclosed in a small concrete wall. Most of the stones were buried and very difficult to locate. The entire cemetery was overgrown by a wide-blade grass that had died and fallen over and covered the stones. Copied Nov. 13, 1983 by Andrew J. Fehd, Bonnie S. Fehd, Scott W. Fehd, Glenda K. Trapp and John G. West." 

Source

1. Lantaff, Carol A. and Trapp, Glenda K. Cemetery Records of Vanderburgh County, Indiana Volume 2. Owensboro, Ky.: Cook-McDowell Publications, 1986.  Published and Copyrighted by the Tri-State Genealogical Society.  The information contained in this publication is prohibited for any use without the explicit written permission of the Tri-State Genealogical Society.

"The Great Pitchfork Incident"

If you do research in Vanderburgh County, IN, then you must have looked at the two volumes of the county's smaller cemeteries compiled by Carol Lantaff and Glenda Trapp. When you worked with Glenda in the cemeteries transcribing tombstone records you were either crazy with a boring life or you came along to do some important work and have a good time doing it. Glenda was extremely meticulous in getting the stones read accurately and would often return to a cemetery numerous times to ensure its accuracy. She was perhaps the best there was in being able to cipher out the impossible to read markers. She would amaze us all when she would tell us what a blank stone had cleverly hidden from us at first glance. She would outline the letters and suddenly, like magic the names and dates would seem to jump out at us. She had fun doing this work, but she took it seriously. She would have us probe the top soil with rods looking for covered fallen stones, and when we found one the work began to dig it up and usually lift it up to be read.

I remember one time in particular when we were working in Union Township in an old cemetery that was flooded often each year by the Ohio River. We were probing for the covered markers. I was busy digging up a found marker and Bonnie Fehd, Glenda's sister-in-law, and Glenda was working behind me. Bonnie was working hard using a pitchfork to probe the topsoil. She was finding tombstones faster than we could dig them up, the pitchfork really worked well. Suddenly I heard this scream!!! I turned around and Bonnie was white with shock. She had accidently plunged the pitchfork into Glenda's sneakers (shoe). One of the tines went through the top of her canvass shoe and through the sole of the shoe and several inches into the ground. Glenda did not know what had happened until she tried to move her foot. It seems the tine went right between her toes without even a scratch. After we realized that Glenda was alright we laughed until tears came to our eyes. I mentioned that something had happened with a pitchfork in a cemetery in one of my President's columns of the Packet years ago, but never told what happened, so TSGS members now you know the rest of the story!