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Interested in indulging your inner history buff this summer, but don’t want to spend a beautiful weekend walking the halls of museums? Consider a form of historical tourism that allows you to ponder the past while enjoying the sun: visiting the areas’ oldest or abandoned cemeteries.
There are more than 150 cemeteries and burial sites in Allen County, according to the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana. Some are still marked and maintained, while many others have slipped from public detection as their wooden headstones decayed or their stone markers were removed or swallowed by growth. Those that still stand serve as windows into the past: Old headstones are reminiscent of an era when large settler families battled the Indiana wilderness, children died and men left home to fight in a brutal Civil War.
Although the Fort Wayne area is covered with quaint cemeteries, we’ve highlighted several that might be particularly worthwhile to explore:
Although it’s a bit out of the way, a visit to Powers Church and Cemetery, about 10 miles east of Angola, is worth the trip for anyone interested in settler history. The cemetery and church, which sit on a small hill off U.S. 20, are both named after the Powers family, pioneers from New York who settled the area in 1837.
The two-room, New England-style church was built in 1876 and has been impeccably preserved. The walls are covered by blue wallpaper from the late 1800s, and the vestibule houses photographs of the settlement founders. Visitors can see the original oak and butternut woodwork and pews. The church stopped holding services in the 1930s.
History Center exhibitor Randy Elliot says the church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the “most picturesque” in northern Indiana.
“People from Allen County have never heard of it,” Elliot says. “But it’s really unique – there’s nothing like it around here.”
The cemetery, which is directly behind the church, was started in 1839, after two settlement children died of scarlet fever. It now spans 15 acres.
The oldest section of the cemetery is just behind the church and can be accessed by a gravel pathway. There are at least 100 headstones, a few of which are shaped to look like tree trunks. Although the cemetery fell into disrepair in the 1950s, volunteers have restored most of the headstones.
Hannah Jenks Powers, the matriarch of the Powers family who was born in 1776, is buried there as are several Civil War veterans.
To get there: Take Interstate 69 to U.S. 20. Go east toward Angola. Go through town and continue several miles to County Road 800 East. Turn left. The church is visible on the right. For tours and other information, call Marcia Powers at 260-665-5498.
Those interested in abandoned cemeteries will get a kick out of this tired graveyard in Wells County – if they can find it, that is.
The cemetery, built in the mid-1800s, has about 200 dilapidated headstones in the middle of the woods near South County Line Road. It was first built for the residents of Old Union Town, a “typical Indiana farm town that flourished and died,” says Michael Galbraith, historical preservation specialist for ARCH.
Galbraith came across the cemetery several years ago while doing research on historic structures in Wells County.
“It’s a great cemetery,” he says. “You’ve got mature trees that have grown up among the grave markers. You have headstones leaning every which way.”
Those lucky to find the graveyard can see depressions where old wooden caskets have collapsed, Galbraith says.
To get there: Take South County Line Road, or Indiana 3, to 200 West; turn south. Turn onto the two-track road on the left; go a third of a mile and the cemetery can be seen on the right. If you see a Union Town Church, you’ve gone too far.
The allure of Saylor Cemetery, a small, 19th-century graveyard near the Ohio border, is in its ties to the Wabash and Erie Canal.
The cemetery was built near the home of Ulrich Saylor, a Maryland native who arrived in Maumee Township in 1836 and bought a lot near canal lock No. 1. He built a store and post office at the site and later became the lock’s chief operator.
At the lock, known as Saylor’s Lock, boats were raised or lowered seven feet as they moved up to the summit at Fort Wayne or down as they traveled toward Lake Erie, Allen County historian Tom Castaldi said. Visitors to the cemetery can see the remnants of the canal on the south side of U.S. 24.
The cemetery, which sits above the south bank of the Maumee River, has about 50 headstones, some of which belong to Civil War veterans. At least one of Saylor’s relatives is buried in the cemetery.
Elliot, of the History Center, says the Saylor Cemetery is one of his favorites. “It’s got a melancholy feel to it,” he says. “It has this ‘going back in time’ kind of feeling.”
According to some accounts, the brown, two-story house on the northwest corner of U.S. 24 and old Scipio Road was once an inn for the canal’s travelers. If visitors follow a wooded path toward the river, they can see the remnants of an old bridge that crossed the Maumee.
To get there: Take U.S. 24 east until you see Scipio Road on your left. Take a gravel road for two-tenths of a mile, and the cemetery will be on the right. If you’ve hit the state line, you’ve gone too far.
It’s easy to lose a day walking the winding paths of Lindenwood Cemetery, thought by many to be one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Indiana.
Lindenwood was built in 1859 to replace the cemetery on Broadway, near the present-day General Electric facility, and is the final resting place of many of the city’s most famous residents.
Cemetery designer John Chislett, who trained in Bath, England, styled the park after 18th-century English parks and landscaped lawn cemeteries. The cemetery, spanning 175 acres of land near downtown Fort Wayne, has natural ravines, gently rolling hills and meandering roads.
In the early years, the cemetery was used for picnics and community events, including the annual Memorial Day parade. The city parade would proceed west on Main Street and end in the cemetery’s parade grounds for ceremonies and speeches by orators of the day. People then would wander through the park, visiting their loved ones’ burial sites and greeting their friends and neighbors along the winding roads and walkways.
Visitors to Lindenwood can see the headstones of many of Fort Wayne’s pioneers and renowned residents. Among them: architect Joel Ninde; abolitionist leader Beulah Ninde; Homer Van Meter, a lieutenant in John Dillinger’s famous gang of Midwest bank robbers; world-famous entertainers Eliza and Charles Nestel, who were little people; Jesse Williams, engineer of the Wabash and Erie Canal; and Frederick Nirdlinger, founder of the city’s first Jewish congregation.
In 1884, the Achduth Vesholom congregation bought a section of the cemetery for a Jewish burial ground. In 1978, the cemetery was included on the National Register of Historic Places.
To get there: The main entrance is at 2324 W. Main St. For tour information, call Craig Lake at 432-4542.
The Catholic Cemetery on Lake Avenue may be more intriguing for who isn’t buried there than who is.
The original Catholic cemetery, now known as Cathedral Square, was bought in 1830 by area Catholics. Around the mid-1840s, due to overcrowding, it was moved to an area near Wall Street and Swinney Avenue. In 1872, again because of the need for more space, Bishop Joseph Dwenger bought 120 acres just a mile outside the city limits and eventually moved the cemetery to the present location.
What bodies were moved to each new cemetery, however, is up for debate. Technological limits in the 19th century, as well as unmarked graves built along the sides of cemeteries (wooden markers were quick to decay), often made it difficult to transport remains.
One of the most debated grave sites is that of Jean Baptiste de Richardville. Richardville, a wealthy, renowned Miami chief and benefactor of the Catholic Church, may or may not lie under his tall headstone in the current Catholic Cemetery. Richardville, who died in 1841, was a polarizing figure among the Miami but managed to keep half of his people in Indiana at a time when they were being forcibly removed.
According to a 1993 edition of Today’s Catholic, Richardville was first buried in an American Indian graveyard occupying the south half of Cathedral Square.
In 1843, when the cemetery was moved near Swinney Avenue, all American Indian remains were moved to the new cemetery, except for his. His 12-foot high stone marker, however, was moved to the new cemetery. His marker was moved to the current cemetery in 1873, the magazine reported. Richardville’s grave site was likely disturbed in 1859, when the present Cathedral was constructed, and again during subsequent additions.
Tom Alter, superintendent of the Catholic Cemetery Association, says he’s “pretty certain” Richardville rests underneath his current marker. Other historians and Richardville’s descendents, however, maintain that his bones lie under or near the south front entrance to the Cathedral.
If you make it out to the Catholic Cemetery, you might also want to swing by Lot B 5-11, where you can find the interesting headstone of Mary Cody. Mary, wife of Morris Cody, an Irishman and city councilman, died at the age of 33 in 1859. Despite years of weathering, visitors can still make out a photograph of her – likely either a daguerreotype or tintype – on her headstone.
To get there: The cemetery is at 3500 Lake Ave., southeast of Parkview Behavioral Health Hospital.
