Hamilton Church Cemetery: the 1830 ground

1830–present

The township's first burying ground opened with its first church. The Methodist society organized at Hamilton in 1830 — the first congregation organized in St. Joseph County, on the Religion section's record — and its cemetery is the ground of that congregation, at the old Chicago Road crossing in the township's northeast, where the village of Hamilton stood. The church building is gone; the cemetery remains, and it is entered in the Indiana Cemetery and Burial Grounds Registry, the state's official roll of historic burying grounds. In 2013 the Indiana Historical Bureau installed its marker for the Hamilton Church Cemetery, the state's own certification that the ground stands in the official record. The congregation's site is marked separately: the tablet the Schuyler Colfax Chapter of the DAR erected in 1965 at Chicago Trail and Walnut Road reads, in its words, "This tablet marks the site of Hamilton Methodist Church — Organized in 1830 — Erected in 1838 — One of the earliest churches in northern Indiana. Soldiers of the American Revolution, War of 1812 and every major conflict buried here." The building dates in that sentence are the tablet's own; the Religion section prints the fuller conflict — a building erected in 1838 on the tablet and in Chapman's narrative, built in 1839–1840 in Howard, dedicated in May 1841 in Chapman's churches section — and this section points there rather than settling the church's dates inside a cemetery article.

The ground's earliest burials stand at inscription strength, from the DAR chapter's readings of about 1900. The copyists marked one stone themselves: Jonathan Garwood, who died 19 July 1830 aged 63, lies under what they recorded as the oldest grave in the cemetery — the township's first death in the record this build carries, in the ground's first year. Mary Garoutte, who froze in the winter of 1831 and died 16 February 1831 aged 34, lies here beside the founding generation: Jonathan Hubbard, died 28 February 1861 aged 74, and Jacob Egbert, died 17 January 1871 aged 76, the men of the Terre Coupee plat and the township's first settlement, whose names the people leg digs whole. The soldier stones stand in Wars & Military Service at name strength and are pointed to, not repeated: two Revolutionary soldiers, Frederick Druliner, whose stone calls him a Revolutionary soldier outright, died 3 June 1841, and James Ranstead (1767–1837), "soldier under Washington," whose grave the DAR chapter itself marked; the ten War of 1812 burials the county history names for this ground; and the Civil War stones of the neighborhood's sons. One conflict among them prints wherever the names print: Virgil Reynolds stands in the newspaper distribution as a War of 1812 burial and in the DAR's stone reading as a soldier of Company F, 29th Indiana Infantry — both tellings carried, neither merged. The ground also holds the later ministry's dead: Grace L. Deacon lies in the Adams family lot here, the family of the post whose name the town's Grand Army post would carry.

Who holds the ground today is the one question this section could not close. The congregation that founded it is extinct as a seated body, the church building long gone, and no record reached names the cemetery's present holder — not the township, not an association, not a church successor. Until one of those records is read, the ground prints as what it provably is: a congregation ground of 1830, in the state registry, its holder unnamed in the open record.

Sources

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, "Hamilton Church Cemetery" marker (installed 2013) — the state's marker record for the ground.
2. Schuyler Colfax Chapter, DAR, tablet at the Hamilton Methodist Church site (erected 1965), text as transcribed in the Historical Marker Database (HMdb), photographed by Duane Hall, 19 May 2014 — contributor photograph, rights as stated there.
3. DAR, Schuyler Colfax Chapter, St. Joseph County, Indiana cemetery inscriptions, Vol. I (c.
4. Indiana Cemetery and Burial Grounds Registry (Indiana DNR, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology) — the ground's registry entry, at entry strength.
5. This build's Churches & Religion (article nc-rel-hamilton-methodist) and Notable People — the congregation's course, the founding families, and the soldier stones at name strength.