Cemeteries And Churches In Monroe County

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ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (18 download)

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Download or read book A Summary of the Cemeteries in Monroe County, Indiana written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We are so privileged to have these special places that help connect us to the history of Monroe County, called cemeteries. Every headstone in a cemetery is a marker documenting a life that had an impact on the formation of that area, our county, and even our state. Even if the headstone documents a baby that died very young; you have to believe that had an impact on the family. Sometimes one headstone will document a health crisis that affected an entire family: such as influenza ; water borne diseases like cholera; or even small pox. Other burying grounds document families that moved from slave states, prior to the Civil War. With some of those families their former servants (slaves) moved with them to Indiana, a free state. Other burials document veterans of the Revolutionary War, that were given war bounty land warrants in Indiana, in place of wages for fighting in the war. While some cemeteries have been lost/destroyed over the years, in traveling around to visit the county cemeteries we have met some people whose families have been taking care of "their" cemetery for generations. They do this even if they have no relations buried there. They view this as a special trust and promise for future generations. Some cemeteries might be the only thing that documents that a group of people ever lived there. The headstones that have been erected are not placed for the dead, but rather for the living. Sometimes they have elaborate and beautiful carvings that are magnificent outdoor artworks. Other times there are amazing details about the life of the person being memorialized. We want to make sure that no one gets the idea that the information that follows was developed all on our own. Through the years families maintained and passed down the information about the cemeteries where their ancestors were buried. Early on the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) collected data about the burials of Veterans, and individuals collected more information about the county cemeteries. In 1939 and 40 the Works Projects Administration (WPA) talked to families and church organizations and compiled an index of all the cemeteries. And they created sketch maps of locations of the cemeteries. In the 1980s members of the Monroe County History Center, led by Claude Rice, attempted to revisit all the cemeteries and build an index of all the readable names on the headstones. But as hard as the earlier groups worked to gather the information, in this round we did find a few "new" cemeteries that were not listed on any of the previous lists. And sometimes we were unable to relocate a cemetery that had been documented before. We hope that some of you readers might become infected by this curious affliction, to hunt down cemeteries out in the wilds of Monroe County. Please help us to find and document all of these final resting places - for the future generations. Good hunting! -- [iii]