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Pioneer
Cemeteries and Their Stories, Madison County, Indiana |
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Pioneer
Cemeteries and Their Stories, Madison County, Indiana |
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Just off the interstate, the Beech Grove Church of the Brethren's old frame house of worship, in the background, is to be torn down to make room for a gas-convenience station. The congregation will receive a new, larger building located elsewhere. The congregation's cemetery will remain and doubtless will still be used by church members and descendents of the Hoosier settlers buried here. |
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Fifty-five members of the German Baptist movement in 1871 are responsible for the Beech Grove Cemetery. They broke away from the Stony Creek Church, which they had attended, and purchased two acres from David Richards for their "Beech Grove Church" and accompanying burial ground. Originally from Frederick County, Maryland, the Green Township settlers who founded this church were also known as Dunkards, Dunkers, Tunkers, Brethren, or Old Order Brethren as well as German Baptists. David Richards and John Armstrong were deacons; John Kalor was elder; Enoch Frey, Carlos Savage, and Israel Huntsinger were assistant preachers. As of 1880, the congregation had grown to seventy-five members, and into the next century, the church continued to be a source of spiritual guidance for area residents.
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George A. Main, 1825-1904, and wife Caroline Biser, 1818-1884, whose gravestone is pictured right, were some of those mid 19th century settlers from Frederick County, Maryland. George and his brother William Henry Main, 1838-1915, and wife Margaret Martin, 1842-1880, moved to Green Township near the Beech Grove Church site. They and their families can be found on the 1860 census. The Main family descends from the German immigrant Johann George Mehn who settled in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1722. |
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By the late 20th century, the congregation numbered several hundred. Plans were made by the church's board of trustees to replace the 120 year old frame building with a new, more convenient facility at the same location. However, when a building contractor made a tempting offer to move the building site to a nearby location and to help with the construction in exchange for property rights to the old site, the congregation was in favor of the move. With a new building, the Beech Grove Church of the Brethren, as it is called now, starts a new phase in its Green Township history. Its accompanying cemetery is to be left at the old location in the middle of what is now a major 21st century urban development, as representative of the township settlers who turned a wilderness into a thriving community.
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The first burial at the Beech Grove Cemetery was Washington Pettigrew in the fall of 1872. Washington Pettigrew and his family came to Green Township in the 1850s and developed an exemplary area farm for that time period. Though not technically a pioneer, he and his family are considered early settlers and as such are documented in Harden's The Pioneer as well as in Forkner's History of Madison County, Indiana. |
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