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Ronetta and Brandy Burton
At Hickory Creek Cemetery, inside the fence at the back of the long-gone church, is a small gravesite inside a white picket fence marked by a little white cross. It has been there for around 150 years. According to folklore, the cemetery, which was on a wagon trail, was visited by strangers after dark. A neighbor noticed a light and went to investigate. A couple had stopped to bury their baby who had just died. After all these years, the grave is still there, still tenderly cared for by the people of the cemetery. But such sentiments may not go on forever….
While platting local cemeteries, Ronetta Burton sometimes finds a toppled headstone buried by leaves and grass by literally tripping over it. It’s the state of more and more of the local cemeteries as our county and its people age.
Memorial Day is the busiest day for cemeteries. Loved ones place wreaths, vases, flowers and other tributes on the graves. But who cares about these burial sites the other 364 days of the year?
Maintenance is a concern from the first grave to the last and will continue to be a problem in the future, says Ronetta. She is a board member and treasurer for Hickory Creek Cemetery. The cemetery is located in Washington Township, about 3.5 miles southeast of Coffey. She has made locating cemeteries, especially those in the northern part of Daviess, a personal project.
Ronetta finds and marks and plats graves as she goes. “We try to at least locate the stones and make a simple map and figure out how many unmarked graves there are before the cemetery is completely gone. We placed white wooden crosses at the unmarked graves at Hickory Creek.”
It doesn’t take long for a grave to be lost…
“Deer knock over the headstones or the metal pins rust off, then they fall down. Grass and dirt sift over and you’d be surprised how fast they get covered over. It’s a constant struggle once they lay on the ground. You have to keeping digging them out all the time. In three or four years you can lose a whole stone.”
Eventually you can lose a whole cemetery.
Research has documented 601 interments at Hickory Creek including one Revolutionary War veteran and several Civil War veterans. These graves are marked with flags on Memorial Day. The oldest marked grave dates to 1845.
Hickory Creek Union Church and Cemetery was built in 1869 and torn down in 1970. Ronetta says the church was unusual for the area in that it was a communal congregation…
“Four different congregations met on different Sundays — the Hickory Creek Baptists and the Grand River Congregation of Cumberland Presbyterians and the Methodists and an unknown congregation. On the fifth Sunday a non-denominational celebration was held with a picnic dinner.”
When the church was torn down, the walnut lumber was sold and the money put in an endowment fund for maintenance. The fund has dwindled away and today, Hickory Creek struggles with funding for basic upkeep.
“Back in the day, the families got together with scythes and hoes and cleaned up the cemetery,” says Ronetta. “You can’t get people to do that anymore.”
Some private cemeteries ask for donations by advertising prior to Memorial Day. Others take up donations on the day itself.
“We typically get very little money during Memorial Day weekend,” observes Ronetta. “If you’re there, people make a better donation than if you just have a donation box.”
Ironically, Hickory Creek was victim to a thief who stole metal plating off the stones. He also stole the money box.
To get extra funding, Ronetta has developed a mailing list of relatives of those buried in the cemetery. She says only about 10% of the people respond to the letters. Funds tend to trickle in. Some people wait until taxes are in the next year before giving.
Hickory Creek typically gets about $150 in donations on Memorial weekend. The letter campaign, which is not done every year, averages just under $3,000.
Each single mowing costs about $160. The board tries to mow the cemetery every week or 10 days from April up until Memorial Day. Then it is mowed on a bi-weekly basis or every three weeks if the rains allow.
“It doesn’t look as nice,” she says. “But we’ve already paid for eight mowings at $160 each this year. If we come up short, we dip into the endowment fund.”
Hickory Creek is a relatively small cemetery, with only a few acres.
“Compare it to the Coffey Cemetery,” says Ronetta. “Their mowing bill in a year’s time must be huge.”
Mowing is only part of yearly maintenance. There is also the cost of righting and resetting stones. Hickory Creek Cemetery has about 25 stones needing repair.
Old church congregations have dissolved and family descendants have passed away. There may be little local interest in the conservation of a cemetery.
“The farther you get away from those old central families, the less interest there is in maintaining the cemeteries,” says Ronetta. “Either the children and grandchildren are very interested or they’re not interested at all.”
The Gallatin Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution transcribed most of the cemeteries in Daviess County between the late 1950s through early 1970s. The Tree Climbers Club of Pattonsburg also made a number of transcriptions particularly in the Benton Township area. Ronetta has composed her own list of around 270 Daviess County Churches and cemeteries that includes their township, section and range, and notes if there is a grave list available. About one-fourth of the cemeteries do not have a list of graves.
Baby’s grave at Hickory Creek Cemetery
“Hickory Creek has a pretty good plat map; we’ve worked on it for about 20 years,” Ronetta says. “And we have white crosses on the unmarked graves. We have a little better record than most do.”
Cemeteries can be categorized into private/family owned or city/government owned.
“There are also Indian burial grounds around the county,” she says. Her list includes several black or African cemeteries.
There will be a need for cemeteries in one form or another as long as people keep dying and want a physical place to find eternal rest.
“Some young people will be dedicated and care passionately enough to do the work; they’ll continue when my generation is gone,” says Ronetta. “After that, I don’t know.”