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LIBERTY Township, inside Potato Creek State Park · 65065 Pine Rd. · this is Liberty Township ground, carried here whole because the Huggart Settlement's dead lie in it
Two dates govern this ground, and both print, because they are dates of different things. The state's marker in the ground's southeast corner and the state park's own page agree on the earlier one: the first burial, in 1845, was Emma Porter, aged nine, whose stone stands near the centre of the ground — "the oldest burial in the cemetery, and the center point of the original cemetery," the park's page says, adding that the family's large monument gives it prominence and that ground-penetrating radar did not show her grave, the wood caskets of that era having decomposed. The later date is the ground's legal beginning: in 1854 — 6 September 1854, on the marker annotation's citation — Samuel Gard deeded land to trustees for a cemetery (Deed Record 72, p. 625). The two dates are not truly in conflict once their referents are named — burials from 1845 on family ground, the deed that made it a cemetery in 1854 — but the carriers that print them print each alone, and the tension stands in this build's conflict register as it was found (C34). A third date rides unexplained: the state bureau's dedication page for this marker shows a photograph of a document captioned "Articles of Association of Porter Cemetery – 1855"; no carrier read quotes or dates that document, and the marker file is its settler. The marker itself, an Indiana Historical Bureau marker installed by the Bureau, the Friends of Porter Rea, and the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana and dedicated 13 September 2003, reads in full on its face: "Samuel Gard deeded land to trustees for cemetery, 1854. First burial, Emma Porter (age 9), occurred 1845. Porter Cemetery named for Emma's family who settled on Potato Creek, 1838. Association formed May 9, 1884 with both white and African-American charter members. Community cemetery also known as Porter Rea because it is located on Potato Creek." and on its reverse: "Soldiers from the Revolutionary War and Civil War are buried here. The Huggart Settlement, a diverse community of African-American, white, and Native American residents, formed in this area in 1830s. Many descendants from the original families, including Samuel Huggart are buried here."
The association is the ground's keeper across three centuries of paperwork. Formed 9 May 1884, it survives — and its name prints in two forms that no carrier read reconciles: the 2003 marker calls it the Porter Cemetery Association, the park agency's current page the Porter Rea Cemetery Association ("The Porter Rea Cemetery Association is in charge of the cemetery. They take care of the mowing, maintenance, and plot sales or assignments"), and the association's own filing name stands as a named gap. The ground's most remarkable fact is its tenure: the park around it was bought up in the 1970s — Potato Creek State Park opened in 1977 — and the cemetery was expressly not purchased: it stands active and independent inside the park, reached by the park's internal road to its Pine Road address. Its officers last named in any carrier read are from the marker correspondence of 2002 — Pamela M. Craft, secretary-treasurer, writing in September 2002 — printed as a 2002 holder, not as the present one; the present officers stand as a named gap. The ground lives in the county's present, not only its past: a February 2026 television feature carries a descendant and local historian, Jan Shupert, and the park's representative walking the ground, and the park runs ranger-led tours of it in the summer of 2026.
Its character is printed in its own carriers' words: "not connected to one church… a community cemetery" — the park's page — and the state bureau's 2014 review of the Huggart marker, citing this ground's published reading, writes of "the integrated graves of blacks and whites, including members of the Huggart, Boone, Bass, and Manuel families." The stones themselves, in the local historian's reading of them: Samuel Huggart's gravestone gives his death — 21 December 1872, aged 68 — and the family name on the stones reads HUGGART, the spelling the state's review adopts on the stones' authority; the park's page photographs a "Huggart Stone," a modified stone obelisk, without attributing it to a named member, and this section does not attribute it either. Three uninscribed field stones beside Emma Porter's grave "may be for Quakers" — the park page's own "may be," printed as such. The ground's extent prints as a warning: no acreage and no total burial count stands in any primary carrier read, and the aggregator index carries this one ground twice — 469 records under "Porter Cemetery," 245 under "Porter-Rea Cemetery," an artifact of the federal record's name (the federal name is Porter Cemetery; the hyphenated Porter-Rea is not in it) — neither figure is a burial count, and the two rows are not two grounds. Its reading state is the strongest outside the town itself: the genealogical society's Volume 1 prints its inscriptions at pp. 162–167 (the reading the state bureau's review itself cites), the WPA register carries pp. 778–781, and the association holds a lot book cited by page in the marker's annotations, running to at least p. 176, its present custody a named gap. A separate Huggart family ground was tested expressly and is not separated by this record: every burial carrier assigns the settlement's dead to this ground, and the separate-ground question stands open only as a formality, its settler the settlement ground's own archaeology and the state registry query for the settlement's section.