160 Year Old Cemetery Restored (Monroeville, IN)

Kevin Leininger has an article in the News-Sentinenel (Fort Wayne, IN), Groups unite to restore 160-year-old cemetery near Monroeville about a genealogist and county coming together to help clean up a cemetery.

Except from the article:

Life is returning to a long-neglected cemetery in southeast Allen County a century after the last burial there, thanks to an unlikely alliance between government officials and one man who refused to let the past die.

“The first time I came out here, it was so sad I cried,” said Adam Barrone, 28, whose childhood fascination with his grandmother’s family history stories led to a job in the Allen County Public Library’s genealogy department and to a discovery that has consumed him for nearly a decade.

When Barrone’s research led him to the 160-year-old Brown family cemetery south of Monroeville eight years ago, it seemed little had been done to maintain the half-acre plot since Sophia Rider’s burial in 1906. Many headstones had nearly been wiped smooth by a century of wind and rain. Some had broken or toppled over; others had sunken deep into the soil. A dense thicket of trees, bushes and weeds made the cemetery nearly invisible from nearby Whittern Road.

But that is changing, thanks to $20,000 from the county and the help of various organizations who, like Barrone, believe the area’s pioneers deserve not only to rest in peace, but in dignity as well.

Surprising he’s so young, but great to see people are taking an interest in preserving these before they are lost.

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