I Found Another Old Cemetery with the Weirdest Headstone Yet

I have been carefully honing what Matt calls my "old lady hobby" of poking around old cemeteries by, well, poking around old cemeteries!

But. I mean. They're interesting!

You get to drive around old country roads and take in the scenery while you look for them, and sometimes there are herds of deer or massive brambles of wild black raspberries. Then when you find one, you get to wander around and read all the stones and be all, "Huh, Thelma. You don't see a name like Thelma anymore!" Or "Awww, sixteen children and they all died from something penicillin could have cured in one dose. The 1800s were so sad!"

Okay, it IS an old lady hobby. Whatever, it's fun.

It's especially fun in autumn. Look at how lovely Mount Salem Cemetery is, tucked into the woods up on a little hill by the highway. You'd never know it was there if you didn't know it was there:

As far as I can tell, this cemetery was lost sometime after 1937, then rediscovered in the early 2010s, after which it was fenced and maintained and some headstones repaired--

Consort, eh? I can't tell if they're being rude or not.

--but I can't find any evidence from the past few years that the cemetery is still on the must-visit list of more than a handful of people.

I found a list of tombstone inscriptions from Mount Salem Cemetery that was sent into the Indiana Magazine of History's June 1937 edition, and I think it would be interesting to go back to the cemetery to compare the list to what's still visible. 

You can also use that list of inscriptions to identify tombstones. Here, for example, must be Richard Perry!

This tombstone is the strangest one I've seen yet:

Look closer at it. William Ross lived to be 116 years old!

Surely not, right?

But people living in his own lifetime believed it of him. Here's an article written about him when he was 115 years old.

William Ross' stone is proof that the cemetery is still being maintained in some fashion, because when this photograph was taken in 2020, his headstone was still broken.

I hate seeing headstones leaned up against trees. You'll likely never figure out exactly where they go back to, so now all that precious local history is context-less. 

I also thought it was strange that there wasn't any yucca growing anywhere. Yucca is THE plant that you'll find in local cemeteries here. It's not native, though--I've heard stories that it might have been brought up from Florida?--so is it possible that this cemetery predates the yucca fad?

I must make a mental note to go back in the spring and look for daffodils.

P.S. Here are my other favorite old cemeteries so far:

• Mt. Ebal Cemetery
• Friendship Cemetery
• Rose Hill Cemetery
• Allens Creek Cemetery

Pumpkinheads, or, Put on a Jack-o-Lantern and Take One Thousand Photos

 

So, this is probably my favorite Halloween activity ever. Thank you, TikTok!

I've been wanting to do this pumpkinhead photo shoot since last October--you know, back when it was actually trendy. I didn't end up getting around to it--so many Halloween crafts, so little time!--but when a teenager specifically requested Halloween projects this month, I wrote it at the top of my to-do list in red letters.

Will, who is by far the most practical of us, declined the opportunity to dress in flannel, put a heavy Jack-o-lantern on her head, and stand around while I took one thousand photos. Fortunately, though, a couple of other family members were willing to indulge me on this beautiful fall day at the peak of autumn foliage:

I took SO MANY PHOTOS! We just kept thinking of poses that it would be funny and awesome to do with a Jack-o-lantern on one's head!

The key to true magic, though, is having a graphic designer at one's service:

This photo shoot was so fun, and I am so happy with the photos! And afterwards, our pumpkinheads joined the rest of our Jack-o-lantern family:

I've longed for years to buy more of those carvable fake pumpkins to add to our menagerie, but the big-box stores eventually realized how awesome they are and they've been stupid expensive for a while now. I bought them yearly when the kids were small, though, and those kid-carved forever pumpkins are my favorites, so I'm pretty stoked to have a new type of magical Halloween memorabilia to display next year!

Weeks 5 and 6 with the Foster Kittens: Happy Little Chonkies Find Their Forever Homes

Five baby kittens lived their best baby lives in our family, and in their last week with us, Syd sat them down for their official kitten portraits.

Here is Athena, the best and most superior of all kittens:

This is Socks, the bravest of cats, who wakes up from every nap and chooses violence anew:

This is Taboo, who spends much of his time staring directly into the soul of the human nearest him:

This is Jones, come to see what the fuss is and accidentally get a rainbow caught in his fur:

This is Anchovy who, bless him, never knows what's going on and always looks vaguely baffled and specifically startled:

This is Pickle, who doesn't always prefer pets from her humans but enjoys being the one who grooms them, instead:

Here's the hardworking photographer, who arranged this studio session to take marketing photos for the shelter and keepsakes for us (as well as to complete a step of the Girl Scout Ambassador Photographer badge!):

I love how her photos show all the sweetest, brightest personality traits of each of our babies:

We kept this litter until they were nine weeks old, and from the time they were seven weeks old on, every moment with them was just pure magic. They were old enough and responsible enough to have the run of the house, and they took advantage of it, claiming most of our giant bean bag for their tiny selves:

I do not know why kittens always feel the need to climb straight up to my shoulders and perch there precariously, but it is my favorite kitten thing:

The kittens were even here long enough to join in with some of our favorite Halloween traditions. Here they are helping me make ambrosia for our Edward Scissorhands family movie night:

So, we either kept this litter of fosters too long and I accidentally got attached, or I still have a lot of grief over Gracie that I haven't processed (or why not both?!?), because wow. I am BEREFT without these five messy, feisty, expensive, time-consuming, stressful foster kittens in my life and on my lap!

Like, spontaneously bursting into tears bereft. Listening to my secret Spotify playlist that's all sad songs about kids growing up too quickly bereft. Thank goodness that all the foster kittens were adopted within three days, and my absolute best darling, Athena, was adopted the same day, or I honestly do not know if I could have stopped myself from driving back to the shelter and adopting them for real bereft. 

The kids have been visibly as surprised at my reaction as I am, because I'm always the one coaching them through the foster returns, talking about the amazing families who will cherish each of our babies and how loved and lucky they're all going to be, etc. Now it's the kids who find themselves cheerfully theorizing that I bet right now Athena is eating wet cat food and purring while somebody pets her and watches her adoringly, or right now Anchovy is sitting there with his usual baffled expression on his face while someone coos at him and takes one hundred photos. 

Ugh, I don't even know, you guys. I might have to deep clean the kids' bathroom and then chase the high with another litter of foster kittens. It's seriously that bad.

• Four Weeks Old
• Five Weeks Old
• Six Weeks Old
• Seven Weeks Old

Girl Scouts Love State Parks, and a Very Strange Cemetery Visit

In Indiana, it wasn't great timing for the annual Girl Scouts Love State Parks weekend. The forecast called for just enough rain all weekend that one could neither plan confidently nor cancel confidently. Normally, my Girl Scout troop is fairly tolerant of miserable weather (we've happily completed entire badge meetings and cookie booths and camping trips more-or-less in the rain!), but all of the activities that they most wanted to do--full moon hike! Trail ride! Campfire dinner! Earning the Ambassador Photography badge!--called for fair weather.

Also, high school students are so busy! I fear that I'm past the days when I can gather my entire Girl Scout troop together at the same time in the same place. Someone's always got their part-time job or volleyball practice or play rehearsal or a college visit or, ahem, ballet class six times a week.

So it was with a much reduced number of Girl Scouts that I went to a local history program put on by one of our nearby state parks one Sunday morning. Not the whole day of fun some kids had hoped for, but we'd learn some local history, at least, spend some time together outdoors, and, most importantly, earn those fun patches! Honestly, I was going to be thrilled if the rain held off long enough for us to at least take a walk around the historic cemetery and take some photographs.

Happily, the rain held off long enough for us to attend the entire program and have a (quick) picnic afterwards AND take a (few quick) photos for the badge.

Allens Creek Cemetery has an unusual reason for being. The land we live on once belonged to the Miami nation. In 1809, William Henry Harrison unethically "purchased" most of Indiana from the indigenous nations who lived on it, then the Shawnee leader Tecumseh led a protest, then Harrison led an attack on Tecumseh's people that he later used as a campaign slogan, then he talked so long at his presidential inauguration that he became ill, then he died. 

Meanwhile, post-Battle of Tippecanoe but pre-Inaugural speech, let's say around 1815 or so, settlers, mostly Scottish and Irish, came into the area to take over the Miami's former land and farm it.  Some of their descendents were still on that same land, still farming it when they weren't working at one of the local limestone quarries, when the state government used Eminent Domain to buy their properties away from them so Monroe Lake could be built. 

Here's a quote from Herbert Lucas, one of the landowners whose property was taken through Eminent Domain:

"You know, you grown up and read about how they took the land away from the Indians and you don’t sympathize until it happens to you. Then you think about it.” (Salt Creek Valley)

Interestingly, he was also specifically upset that the government planned to take and move the cemetery where all his family, including the great-grandfather who was the original homesteader of his property, was buried. 

Our event was to tour where they put Herbert Lucas' great-grandfather, as well as all the other residents of all the other cemeteries that were moved during this process. 

I'd worried that the tour would be boring for the kids--it was a very deep dive into very local history, and although you know how *I* feel about very local history, the kids couldn't possibly be expected to feel the same.

It was, however, very interesting, and VERY strange!

A volunteer was there to demonstrate the proper way to clean an old headstone. Although you can clean more thoroughly with D/2, or even engage in restoration work, it turns out that you can get most old headstones quite clean with just a low-pressure water sprayer, a soft brush, and a non-metal scraper:

A future community service project, perhaps?

And then we took our tour!

As the naturalist explained, this cemetery held the burials from several prior cemeteries, all moved from the Salt Creek Valley during the preparation to create Monroe Lake. 

[here is where the kittens decided to help me!]

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Here's where the kids and I had our first whispered, furious conversation: That's all they did?!? But surely they missed some people!

We brought this up to the naturalist, and she agreed that yes, they surely missed some people.

Some of the cemeteries that they decided to move would be well underwater when Monroe Lake was completed:

Others actually wouldn't have been, but might still have been subject to seasonal flooding:

When the workers came to move the cemetery, they used the surveyors' work to locate the graves, and when they placed them in Allens Creek Cemetery, they preserved the original placement of graves in location to each other, but put them closer together.

If a headstone had any carving on it, it was moved, as well--

  

--but if it was a fieldstone or had no discernible carving, it was left and a standardized headstone was put in its place at Allens Creek Cemetery:

At this point, the kids had another furious whispered discussion, then I was marshalled to ask what it looked like when the Black migrant tobacco farmers who had been hired for this project exhumed graves: did they find caskets, or did they gather skeletons, or?

And so here's where the naturalist blew all our minds: in most cases, they found nothing.

The naturalist said (and Will and I Googled it on the way home because we didn't believe her, but she was correct!) that remains, even bones, decompose within 20 years. So what the workers actually did was excavate down until the soil composition changed, then collect the 12 inches of dirt above that line, put it into a box, and bury that box in its new location in Allens Creek Cemetery.

The kids and I were all, "WHAT?!? JUST... WAIT, WHAT?!?"

Government administration, Folks!

This pointless transferral of dirt was also mandatory. If there were any living relatives of the deceased, they could choose to have the remains re-buried in a different cemetery, at their own expense, but the relatives could not choose to simply leave the dirt that used to be their loved one in its spot to be covered by the lake.

In case we thought that this might have been completely fine with the Salt Creek Valley citizens of 1965, the naturalist told us the story of the "missing" cemetery. It had been surveyed, with a census and photographs of the grave locations, but when the workers went back to that spot... there was nothing there. Were they bribed? Did the family members remove and hide all the headstones? Was there an administrative mix-up with the original survey? Nobody knows, or if they do, they're not telling!

After the event, the troop had a picnic in the back of my car, then we tried to work on the Ambassador Photography badge for a few minutes before the rain really got going. One of the kids brought this awesome prism that she let me try out--

--but when I looked up from playing with it I discovered that all my Girl Scouts were actually in the street and I had to go supervise, because those edgy standing-in-the-middle-of-the-country-road photos only look cool if you don't get hit by a car right after you take them!

Frankly, I hadn't expected a lot from this event. All I'd needed was for the kids to not be too bored while we did an activity that was just long enough for them to earn their Girl Scouts Love State Parks fun patch. So I was STOKED at how legitimately fascinating the tour was, and how fascinated the kids clearly were! It was an especially great event for teenagers, because it got them thinking and talking about big questions that don't always have a right answer. Here is just some of what we discussed:

• Why should a government get to take land away from someone who already owns it?
• What's the point of moving a cemetery if you know you're going to miss some of the bodies?
• What's the point of moving a cemetery if there are no actual bodies to move?
• Why couldn't people choose to let their loved ones stay in their original cemetery locations under the lake?
• Would it have been useful to do an archaeological excavation of the cemeteries as they were being emptied?
• Where did the contracted Black workers stay, and how were they treated? And were they hired because they would work more cheaply, or because it was work that made white people squeamish, or because it was work that white people thought they were too good to do, or because it was work that local people refused to do because they didn't want their cemeteries moved?

And of course, most importantly:

• WHAT IS THE REAL STORY OF THAT MISSING CEMETERY?!?!?!?