Bath Springs cemetery

Karen Coffey in Union County has done a nice job documenting the graves in Bath Springs cemetery, no small feat considering the shape it's in.

Bath Springs isn't especially easy to find but it's easily accessible until you get to the place. After that, the gate that lets you in is in pretty sad condition.

The rest of it is in even worse shape.

The cemetery was probably closer to old Fairfield than is Old Franklin Church, though not by much. To access it, take S.R. 101 south from Liberty or north from Brookville to the Sagamore road, which was the old S.R. 101 that led down into the valley.

A half-mile or so in is Bath Springs Road. Turn east (actually, south) for a quarter-mile or so, and it's on your right. Hidden in the trees, you can't see it with the Google map option, though the map will pinpoint it for you.

The man who manages it (I will avoid using his name for purposes of privacy) said the Bath Springs graveyard contains the remains of more Revolutionary War soldiers than any other in Union County.

The earliest stones would be from around 1817 and many are missing, disintegrated or broken, illegible. There's plenty of work to do just finding some of the graves. Probes for gravesites are ongoing, I was told.

The newest one that I encountered was from 1927 though a few Revolutionary stones have been replaced, apparently by family members. That is a somewhat peculiar site amid the shadows. It feels eerie walking through the place, knowing there's a grave under your feet.

A bit of background. The cemetery was, when established, in Bath Township (hence the name) and that was in Franklin County. Union County and Harmony Township were established in around 1821. Naturally, the cemetery didn't move. Fairfield Township was formed in 1817, two years after Fairfield itself was founded.

Some fairly interesting residents at Bath Springs, including most members of the Crocker and DuBois families. Most of those buried there migrated from New Jersey, and the Crocker and DuBois clans were no exception.

A relative of Benjamin Crocker offered me some correspondence a few years ago that's posted on the Fairfield website. THE LINK IS HERE.

Another interesting family name is Murphy. The patriarch of that family, William Murphy, was born in 1742 in Ireland and served in the American Revolution. He had a very large family. Karen Coffey's research on the Union County GenWeb site includes this anecdote about Murphy:

"He lived 20 miles from Philadelphia and being so near the city his family was constantly harassed by British soldiers, Tories and renegades. One night during such an attack, when they failed to enter the home by many means they tried the chimney. William Murphy’s wife Phebe smoked them out by burning a feather bed in the fireplace."

The DuBois family came from New Jersey and those buried at Old Bath Springs cemetery were, according to Karen Coffey, mainly from the descendants of William DuBois, who was born in 1778 in New Jersey and died in 1817 in Bath Springs.

Many members of the Rose family are also interred in Bath Springs. They had a strong influence in the area north of Fairfield upwards into the 1830s.

Why did the bulk of this community come from New Jersey or eastern Pennsylvania? One can presume they were Quakers, and there was a reasonably strong Quaker presence in that part of Union County in the early 1800s. A community named "Salem" was originally platted east of Roseburg, where Quakers were known to gather. The Quakers were strong abolitionists at a time when Indiana was just being formed. Anti-slavery people came to the state in an effort to tip the political scales.

Bath Springs cemetery contains the remains of some very early American settlers, many of whom were born in the mid-18th century long before the American Revolution. Many of the settlers were connected to Fairfield and the valley toward Quakertown.

 

Lots of work to be done at Bath Springs.

Old Franklin Cemetery

The Franklin County genealogy website says Old Franklin Cemetery was established in 1810.

That would precede the founding of Franklin County itself by a year. In effect, the graveyard was in Dearborn County at the time.

Old Franklin EUB-Methodist Church in its current state, was built in 1831 and is one of the oldest functioning churches in Indiana on a continuous basis.

The cemetery itself is in pretty good shape and the county genealogy site says about 500 graves are marked and/or acknowledged. This cemetery was affected by the federal reservoir project only in how it's accessed. The stones and graves were not challenged by the lake.

The 1810 establishment date would seem early if it's compared to the dates of death on the genealogy website, though a number of stones are "illegible" ... so, anything's possible.

It's also worth noting that the site of the church and cemetery match up with the land entry by the fabled Robert Green, who's been given credit for entering a section in 1804. I've mostly determined that Green didn't show up until 10 years later, but the history books are already written.

The church and cemetery are visible from S.R. 101 just south of Causeway Road. To get to it (there's only one way in and one way out) ... turn west on Causeway Road, toward the lake, and it's a few yards up, on the left.

Sims-Brier and Bath Springs cemeteries, the other two that will be discussed briefly, are both nearby.


Some of the oldest graves in Old Franklin:

Walter Tucker 1770-1814
Elizabeth Howell 1800-1830
George Dare 1803-1831
John Hetfield (died) April 1834
Nancy Glidewell 1793-1837
Sarah Fry (died) June 1845
David Templeton 1791-1863
Solomon DuBois 1802-1877

When illness strikes:

Infant boy Brauchla  3 Oct 1896 - 7 Oct 1896 (son of) E.F. & N.A. Brauchla
Infant girl Brauchla 30 Sept 1898 (daughter of) E.F. & N.A. Brauchla

As in most rural cemeteries, family names are common. Old Franklin's listings include lots of:

Fry
Howell
Dubois
Bockover
Copeland
Beesley
Davis
Dare
Watterson

Note that cemetery listings are probably incomplete.
Church services are Sundays at 9 a.m. EDT. Parking appears to be limited.

Useful link:

Franklin County Cemetery Association

Several war veterans are buried here. 

This Civil War stone has been upgraded. Not all of them have been.

Old Franklin was built in 1831.
Its cemetery precedes it, though the church's history is older than 1831.

New Fairfield cemeteries -- Part 1

At Old Franklin Church cemetery, 2015

The nice thing about a cemetery is that it tells us our future. It's where you will probably end up someday.

The nicer part of that is that you will probably be there alongside people who were important to you.

Which is what makes cemeteries more fun than somber. They leave a footprint. The people who are interred in them are the history of the community they left behind. They are the thread that leads to you.

Regardless of why people are interred in cemeteries, the fact remains: We put them there and make a note of it somewhere not far from that spot.

Tombstones.

Aside from an occasional peony bush or a leaning old elm tree off near a rusty old fence line, that's about it.

Everything else either is carved on the stone or from your imagination.

The three main accessible cemeteries in the Fairfield area are ripe with history, both robust and sad. In some cases, we need to do a LOT more to address the needs of those little living (if that's appropriate) history books.

Franklin and Union county genealogy websites are full of data on the graveyards in the immediate Fairfield area, those being:

Sims-Brier
Old Franklin
Bath Springs

These blog entries will take a stab at describing those graveyards, what has happened to them since they were established and, perhaps if we are lucky, what is likely to happen to them in the future.

It's unlikely they will get smaller.

It's a certainty that if you visit these places, your past, present and future will bump into each other.

There are a lot of cemeteries in Franklin County. I won't attempt to visit the ones outside the immediate Fairfield area.

Civil War -- Butler County, Ohio

Civil War photo from Fold3.com

Some odds-and-ends on the Civil War, as if we actually "covered" it in these blog entries. The conflict, from 1861 through 1865, and for years later during the reconstruction phase and ongoing bitterness, was perhaps unique in world history.

Finding your own path through that history is effectively something you might just have to do on your own. The links and snippets are interesting in their own right, designed to at least touch on the reality of the time.

But the Civil War is hardly a "southern" event or a "Gettysburg moment." For your own search, don't stop at the state line.

In Butler County, Ohio, historian Jim Blount has "oodles" of interesting facts about the beginning of western society in the Whitewater Valley, and his Civil War essays are enlightening as well.

Blount did his own digging about the Civil War.

"At least 4,400 Butler County men had served in the Union army or navy in all regions of action. According to calculations by James E. Campbell, a local Civil War veteran who later became governor of Ohio, two out of every three men of military age in the county served in the Union cause at one time or another. Campbell estimated there were 6,544 men of military age among the county's 35,840 residents at the start of the war."

Campbell, writing in 1915, emphasized that most Butler Countians were volunteers, not draftees. "The counties of the state had furnished, on an average, 35% of their enrollment" when the first draft was held Oct. 1, 1862, he said. But Butler County "had sent to the field over 42% . . . being 337 men more than her full quota up to that time. She was, therefore, one of the 13 counties (out of 88) in which no draft was ordered."

Campbell's research concluded that many soldiers also served in Indiana regiments as well as at least a dozen other states. Since Butler County is directly across the state line from Franklin County, Ind., one can assume that if you go searching for war records, you may want to expand your geography.

And in the battle for Cincinnati in September, 1862, "Hundreds of Butler County men were among those short-term volunteers known as Squirrel Hunters when Cincinnati was threatened with invasion." In that defense, Indiana Gen. Lew Wallace was credited with designing a plan to repel the Confederate army.

Butler County volunteers also fought against John Hunt Morgan’s Confederate cavalry when it passed between Hamilton and Cincinnati in July, 1863.

Blount's history explores the circumstances surrounding the Confederate surrender in April, 1865, when Gen. Robert E. Lee met with U.S. Grant.

"Some troops," wrote historian E. B. Long, "refused the surrender terms and scattered to Mexico, the Far West or just went home. There were operations in Texas and on the Rio Grande by the Federal Army for most of the rest of 1865 against guerrillas and former Confederates escaping into Mexico," said Long in his 1971 book, The Civil War Day by Day.

BLOUNT LINK

FOLD3.COM (war research link)

Robert J. Templeton's 

Civil War index card. 

(From Fold3.com)

Lew Wallace -- Part 2

U.S. Grant

Gen. Lew Wallace, born in Brookville, educated in Indiana, is best known for his blockbuster novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

His military exploits are no less compelling. Without enumerating his successes and failures beyond his one egregious mistake, Wallace could be categorized thus by the Indiana History Magazine, published by Indiana University:

"Wallace is less remembered as one of the highest ranking Union generals during the Civil War. A romantic even as a soldier, Wallace hungered for military glory and always longed for a command assignment where he might experience the thrill of battle while promoting his military renown."

Wallace's zeal and efficiency in the early days of the Civil War merited him a promotion to major general.

So, what went wrong?

Shiloh.

Wallace was basically self-trained in military strategy. He came from affluence, and his political clout afforded him inroads into the hierarchy.

Wallace and Maj. Gen. U.S. Grant had apparently forged a somewhat tenuous friendship and after a decisive battle in February, 1862, at Fort Donelson, Wallace gained enough favor to be given charge of his own division.

So far, so good.

Wallace didn't exactly "general" the way Grant liked it but he forgave the Hoosier because he was producing positive results.

As April arrived, Grant was jockeying for position at a place in Tennessee called Pittsburg Landing (aka Shiloh). Wallace was essentially told to wait for further orders. Wallace wasn't happy about that.

The history at that point becomes more cloudy.

"Principal actors in the subsequent events disagree about times, the content of verbal orders, individual demeanors, and motives. No matter how one weighs the undocumented recollections and virulent recriminations, the central problem remains that Wallace did not reach the Union Army at Pittsburg Landing until after nightfall on April 6."

Vague orders mixed with military arrogance created a bubbling stew after that. Wallace was never clear if he'd done the right thing and Grant was apparently in no mood to discuss it.

Ever.

At that time, Grant was still not in charge of all Union forces. That role was held by Henry Halleck, who assigned Wallace to Cincinnati where he'd later be revered for defending the city.

"Despite his dubious military credentials and his well-developed sense of self-importance, Wallace proved to be the ideal choice for this critical assignment. The unusual situation called for an energetic commander with a flair for the dramatic. Wallace's failings as a field commander proved harmless in this case; indeed, his hyperactive approach to battle may have saved lives on both sides of the Cincinnati trenches."

But Grant evidently continued to seethe, and as time went on Wallace's standing in the Union military system eroded.

He pleaded with Grant to have the record set straight at Shiloh. Grant consistently refused to acknowledge that mistakes had been made. As the years passed, Grant began to soften his criticism of Wallace but the Hoosier never got the satisfaction he needed -- an admission that he'd done no wrong at Shiloh.

Wallace was re-assigned to commission work and would play an important part in war crimes trials after the rebellion ended, in part because of his knowledge of the atrocities committed at the infamous war prison in Andersonville, Georgia.

After Wallace was assigned to duties along the Mexican border, he conjured up a scheme that would have helped the Mexicans overthrow the French, who had invaded the country in 1861. Grant found the strategy compelling but never actually acted on Wallace's plan. Instead, Grant found other resources and forced the French out of Mexico in 1865.

Wallace was later named by President Rutherford B. Hayes as governor of New Mexico territory, still awaiting word from Grant that all was forgiven and corrected about Shiloh. His attempts to meet Grant in person were ignored and his book on military infantry tactics was dismissed by Grant as having little merit. He even attempted to land a position in the diplomatic corps; Grant chose somebody else.

Wallace just couldn't get past Shiloh.

He never would.

By the 1870s, Wallace would begin his writing career. The Fair God was published in 1873.

Wallace's claim to fame in New Mexico was his role in ending the reign of terror by William Bonney, Billy the Kid.

It was in New Mexico that he wrote the immensely popular Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

After Wallace was assigned to the ambassadorship to Turkey under President James Garfield, the debate over Shiloh continued to rage in periodic academic reports and essays, but it never ended.

So why did Grant act as he did toward Wallace?

"In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Northern newspapers vilified Grant for his performance during the battle. Reporters, many far from the battle, spread the story that Grant had been drunk, falsely alleging that this had resulted in many of his men being bayoneted in their tents because of a lack of defensive preparedness."

Grant had to blame somebody.

In 1884, Wallace wrote to Grant, a full 22 years after the battle:

"The terrible reflections in your indorsement on my official report of the battle, and elsewhere, go to the world wholly unqualified. It is not possible to exaggerate the misfortune thus entailed upon me."

Nearly 25,000 casualties were documented at Shiloh.

SHILOH LINK

US GRANT LINK

FRENCH IN MEXICO LINK

Lew Wallace - Part 1

Gov. David Wallace

Plenty has been written about Lew Wallace, the soldier, author, son of a prominent political leader.

For our purposes covering the 200 years of the history of Fairfield, Wallace's life is a very long stretch. That doesn't make him any less interesting. His role in the Civil War is the stuff of movies ... which, by the way, Wallace actually inspired.

Ben-somebody.

A bit about Wallace's early life will get us to the good parts where he and Gen. U.S. Grant spent most of their lives bickering.

The Wallaces came to Brookville in 1817, about 10 years before Lewis was born. His father, David, would soon become governor and make his mark on the state by crafting a plan to bring the state out of the woods and into the future. This all related to the environment surrounding the upstart state capital at Indianapolis. David Wallace said Indiana needed roads.

David Wallace's life is interesting in its own right, but he's not particularly important to our blog, so we will shorten his story to say that he had studied at West Point, married Esther Test, of a prominent family ... and from there, he would make his mark on Indiana history.

At some point, the Wallace clan moved to the town of Covington and, from there, Lewis got an early education in Crawfordsville before ending up in Centerville being supervised by one of his aunts in the Test family.

According to a 1941 article in the Indiana Magazine of History by Irving McKee, Lew Wallace was somewhat of a delinquent.

Gen. Lew Wallace

Writes McKee: "The preparatory department of Wabash, Crawfordsville's new Presbyterian college, as well as the county seminary there, were uncongenial to the tow-headed Lewis; in each the inevitable bullying master ruled, and, fleeing each, the truant learned more of woods and fields than of grammar, arithmetic, and Latin."

As the state began swimming in red ink over its internal improvements, which included the canal system, young Lewis began to explore new diversions while his father struggled in vain to rescue his flagging political career.

In Centerville, a man named Professor Samuel K. Hoshour was credited with turning Lewis's life around, introducing him to literature and writing.

"Upon occasion he still received a flogging, but the pain was ameliorated by discrimination and sound justice. Moreover Hoshour revealed the splendors of John Quincy Adams's 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory,' 'The Spectator,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and the verses in St. Matthew.

That Scripture is said to be the genesis of Wallace's most important work.

Ben-somebody.

The Centerville episode a success, our hero returned to Indianapolis.

Writes McKee: "Back at the Indianapolis seminary after a year, Lewis suddenly found he could more than hold his own there. On Friday evenings the classroom was the scene of the Union Literary Society's meetings, throbbing with debates, recitations, readings and parliamentary exercises. With various young ladies for inspiration, lyrics flowed freely from young Wallace's pen and were not only read to the members of the Society but, occasionally, published in a friendly newspaper."

In effect, Lew Wallace was a dreamer, a romantic, a literary adventurer and a man of poetry and fantasy. He apparently had an enormous gift for writing at a young age. His fascination for the battle at the Alamo in the Mexican War of 1846 inspired him to pursue a military career.

He had enlisted in the Mexican War, read some books on tactics, and maintained an interest in volunteer military organizations, so upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed adjutant general of Indiana.

He was in charge of raising the state's first quota of regiments and was given command of the Eleventh Indiana Volunteers. A citizen-soldier in the American tradition, Wallace learned most of his military lessons in the field.

In his autobiography, Wallace writes that he knew in advance that the rebellion would be not only a long and bitter conflict, but that it would also be crowded with "opportunities for distinction not in the least inconsistent with patriotism."

Wallace would come full-face with his own history at the Civil War battle of Shiloh.

After that, he wrote a book about Ben-somebody and really did become famous.

Trivia: 
Zerelda Sanders married David Wallace. She was the sister of Jemima Sanders. (these are not fake names) ... and Jemima was married to Richard J. Gatling, whose invention -- the Gatling gun -- was a feared weapon during the Civil War and into the 20th century.

Gatling's invention would, he believed, reduce the number of soldiers necessary for battle and therefore reduce the number of casualties. Odd how that didn't work out.



WALLACE POETRY

WALLACE BROOKVILLE CONNECTION

WALLACE LIBRARY, CRAWFORDSVILLE

GATLING (Wikipedia)

David (left) and Lew Wallace

Civil War -- Part 4

Lt. Climpton Moore's grave at Sims-Brier

For a frame of reference, the 1880 census for Fairfield Township was 818 people. We can assume it was close to that in prior decades, though the population took a steep drop in the 1890 census.

For our purposes, that's not relevant at the moment.

What is important is that at least 16 graves in Sims-Brier and Old Franklin cemeteries contain the remains of men who served in the Civil War in some capacity.

Without doing extensive cemetery research on any of them, it's probably safe to assume that these soldiers were buried in the graveyards where they lived.

It's also likely that some Fairfield soldiers from the war are buried in other cemeteries, far far away from Indiana.

A few are buried in other graveyards in Franklin, Union or Fayette counties, some probably in Ohio, and elsewhere in Indiana.

No surprise, that.

The Civil War took a very heavy toll on Indiana. Fairfield was no exception. Most Franklin County men were attached to the Indiana 68th Infantry Regiment, which was organized in Indianapolis in 1862.

The regiment consisted of many from Ripley, Rush and Dearborn counties as well. They served mostly in the Kentucky-Tennessee theater. Most men served for three years, or until the war ended in 1865.

What appears to have happened is that the regiment was captured during fighting in September 1862, and sent back to a "parole camp" in Indianapolis, probably in a prisoner exchange. They reorganized and went back to war.

Franklin County records from the period list the names of the men who served in the war, and in most cases what happened to them. More than a few died in action.

A Civil War archive says this about the 68th:

"The regiment lost during service 4 officers and 35 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 111 enlisted men by disease." (It is not explained what is meant by 'disease.')

Some entries in the log:

• Mullin, Joel, Fairfield,  died at Nashville, TN, March 23, 1863.
• McCormick, Theodore, Fairfield, reported missing, Oct. 31, 1862.
• Vanlandingham, Lewis, Fairfield, discharged Nov. 7, 1863, disability.
• Miller, Henry H., Fairfield, discharged Dec. 24, 1862, disability.

It is also possible that some Franklin County soldiers mustered in with the 69th Regiment based in Richmond-Connersville, also in 1862.

A war narrative in an old Fayette County history describes the fate of the 69th:

"On the 5th day of July, 1865, the battalion was mustered out of service ... at Mobile, and on the 7th left for home, having 16 officers and 284 men. This regiment has left its dead in 11 states, and participated in the battles of Richmond, Ky., Chickasaw Bluffs, Arkansas Post, Thompson's Hill, Champion Hill, Black River Bridge, the sieges of Vicksburg and Jackson, and the capture of Blakely, Ala., which caused the surrender of Mobile."

The war was local in many ways, distant in many others.

DONATIONS

According to the Fayette County Atlas:

Throughout the war, the mothers, wives and sisters at home were ever earnest in their ministrations to the soldiers, supplying those delicacies and comforts needed in the field. The soldiers' families, too, were cared for, as may be judged from the great relief fund expended. The Ladies' Aid Society of Connersville was organized at the court house January 13, 1862. 

At various periods during the war the farmers throughout the county donated liberally in the way of wood. By reference to the files of the press it is noticed that up to October 22, 1863, 250 cords had been donated.

CELEBRATION

The Fayette Atlas describes the events surrounding the news that the war had ended. This report comes from an April 13, 1865 newspaper article, The Times:

Such scenes never have and probably never will occur again in Connersville as were witnessed last Monday. The fall of Richmond was celebrated here in a measure, but then the cup of joy was not yet full, and the surrender of Lee and his army remained to assure our people of the final triumph of the glorious old Army of the Potomac, and to make assurance doubly sure that the Rebellion had received its death-blow. 

Early on Monday morning the glad news of that great event was borne us on the telegraph wires, and our pen cannot portray the joy with which our citizens received the news that the army which for four years had given the Rebellion all its vitality, was among the things of the past. 

Demoralized, battered and broken it had been, but our fondest hopes were consummated when the bleeding remnant of the Army of northern Virginia laid down its arms at the feet of that glorious hero, U.S. Grant. Upon the receipt of the news the first notes of rejoicing rang forth from the church bells, and small, in the town, and the clamor had reached its climax when guns and anvils joined in the chorus. 

Then who can describe the scene that followed and continued until far into the night? Not a countenance but bore a smile. Shouts upon shouts rent the air amid the shaking of hands and frantic embraces. The people were wild with joy.

INDIAN GEN-WEB MILITARY RECORDS

THE 68TH REGIMENT

JULIE SCHLESSELMAN'S 'THOSE WHO SERVED' PUBLICATION