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Fisherman discovers submerged headstones

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« on: August 11, 2007, 02:47:03 am »

Fisherman discovers submerged headstones
State museum, DNR will try to determine origin of old markers found in White River
 

 By Vic Ryckaert
vic.ryckaert@indystar.com
           
Jim Hodges has never made a catch quite like the one he pulled from White River north of Broad Ripple a few days ago.
 



Salvaged: This is one of the tombstones Jim Hodges found while fishing. - Matt Detrich / The Star
 
The 62-year-old Indianapolis man lifted a 145-year-old gravestone into his bass boat.
About a dozen additional gravestones dating as early as 1830 are in the water west of the bridge in the 7700 block of Keystone Avenue.
"All these headstones, I don't think they have any business of being where I found them," Hodges said.
Hodges stumbled on to the stones last week as he untangled a snagged fishing line. He rescued one that reads "Frank H. Kelly, 1830-1862," and said he will keep it at his home until someone official wants it back.
"I figure it belongs in my garden just as well as it belongs in the bottom of a river," he said. "I'm thinking someone got paid to possibly move a small cemetery, and they did half the job."
Experts from the Indiana State Museum and the Department of Natural Resources figure the stones were tossed in the river decades ago. They are now researching to determine where they belong.
"Because they are bunched together, this is somebody who dumped them there," said Jeannie Regan-Dinius, cemetery registry coordinator with DNR's Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology.
"We're going to get them out of the river, clean them with the proper techniques and either put them back where they belong or in some other respectful place," Regan-Dinius said.
One stone that reads "William S. Longhenry, 1868-1914" was turned over to the Indiana State Museum last week.
R. Dale Ogden, the museum's chief curator for cultural history, said Longhenry's monument has been stored in a segregated artifact-holding area so the microbes living on it do not spread to other relics.
"This kind of stuff pops up every now and then in a lot of different ways," Ogden said. "Neighborhoods change, and what used to be the country is now the city."
Some stones, he said, have been surplus markers that were never used because of a mistake or were replaced after family members bought something more ornate. A farmer or construction crew might have stumbled upon them while looking to develop land that was once a cemetery.
"A lot of people have passed through here in the last 4,000 years," Ogden said. "It makes sense that every now and then we run into one of them."
The stones might have been stored somewhere until someone decided to get rid of them, Ogden said. He can't offer any legitimate reason someone would throw them in White River.
"Breaking up those stones would be some work," he said. "The easiest thing to do is to put them somewhere where they are not likely to be seen anytime soon."
Other submerged stones read "Effie A. Ferryman, 1861-1920" and "Samuel H. Lisle, At Rest, 1868-1925."
Recovering the stones will take several weeks, officials said. In the meantime, experts will enlist the aid of genealogists to dig through records and link the names to a cemetery believed to be in or near Marion County.
"With the names and the birth and death dates, they should be able to have a pretty good chance of tracking where these things came from," Ogden said. "It's a mystery, isn't it? It may be a mystery that will be solved."


Call Star reporter Vic Ryckaert at (317) 444-2761.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007707290415
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