The New Carlisle Cemetery: the town's own ground

By the nineteenth century–present

The town's burying ground stands at the west end of its main street, and in 2026 it is run the way the town runs its water: as a department, by a board, under an ordinance with a price list. The seat is West Michigan Street, the old Michigan Road: Olive Township's cemeteries page gives the ground as "802–890 West Michigan Street" and states that it "is managed by the Town of New Carlisle." The federal and directory records carry the address in their own forms — 849 West Michigan Street in the listing record, "802-898 W MICHIGAN STREET" in the veterans' gravesite file — and the three forms print as their carriers give them, the township's range governing as the holder-side statement. The town's own site gives the ground a department page of its own, and the department has named officers as of November 2026: a Cemetery Board of Dave Doll, Susan Moffitt, Carol Middlebrook and Joyce Gard; John Mrozinski, the town's Director of Public Works; and Tristen Drake, Town Crew Supervisor.

The governing instrument was renewed inside the present year. Ordinance #1504, passed and adopted by the Town Council on 3 March 2026 and read first-hand for this section from the town's posted text, amends section 90.47 of the Town Code — the cemetery chapter, Chapter 90, its fee schedule cross-referencing Chapter 98 — and charges the Cemetery Board with reviewing the cemetery's fees and recommending them to the Council. The schedule the ordinance carries prices the ground's whole economy: an adult grave opening and closing at 775 dollars on weekdays and 1,100 on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays; a cremation grave at 400; single graves sold at 375 dollars a column, 750 the pair as the schedule prints it; a cremation plot in the Flower Garden Addition at 250 and 250, 500 in all; designated stillborn graves priced in the same table; transfers at 25 dollars; and foundation permits whose inspection lines run, in the ordinance's own limitation, to "Lots 270, 299, 306, and 335 in Block 2 of the first addition," with installment terms of ten percent down and twelve monthly payments. The ordinance's geography is evidence in its own right: a ground with a first addition, numbered blocks and lots running past three hundred, and a named Flower Garden Addition is a ground that has grown by plats, and its internal map stands in the town's records at that strength until the plat record itself is read.

The ground's memorial center stands in its southern quarter: the Civil War Memorial, "Erected 1909 by Deacon Relief Corps No. 48," the women's relief corps of Deacon Post No. 115 of the Grand Army of the Republic — the post the people leg proves from the state archive's own finding aid — raised two generations after the war in the ground where the town's dead of that war lay. The marker record seats the memorial reached from West Michigan Street east of County Line Road, at the cemetery's southern entrance. The ground also holds the town's named memorial soldier of a later war: Private James W. Swanson, in whose honor the state's 1921 Gold Star roll records the American Legion post was named, lies here on that roll's word — "buried New Carlisle" — the name-level account standing in War Heroes. Two of the township's War of 1812 dead rest here unnamed, this ground's share of the standing want. And the ground has drawn the town's gratitude in money: the Town Council's minutes of 29 December 2014 record the clerk-treasurer's report of the last will of Mrs. Helen Rice Dale, bequeathing 10,000 dollars to the New Carlisle Cemetery — a bequest read in open council and printed here at the minutes' strength. The federal gravesite file carries this ground's modern veteran burials at its own strength, and carries the aggregator's noise with them — one of its records files the ground under La Porte, Indiana, and another under the Town Hall's address and telephone — printed here once, as the standing caution that a compiled file is not a sexton's book.

For all that present resolution, the ground's founding was not reached. The want is banked as GAP-NC6-CEM-2. Its settlers are the town's own records in order: the history line of Town Code Chapter 90 itself and the town's ordinance book; the county recorder's plat and deed records for the ground and its first addition, which would date the ground's growth and name its grantors; Watt and Wade's New Carlisle: The Story of Our Town, 1835–1955 (1956), the town's own history, read in part for the sources leg; and the DAR inscription volumes, whose earliest stones in this ground would bound its opening from the burial side. Until one of them is read, the ground's age prints exactly as it stands here: a town ground on the Michigan Road, old enough to hold two soldiers of 1812, governed in 2026 in the open — founded on a date the record has not yet surrendered.

Sources

1. Town of New Carlisle, Ordinance #1504 (passed and adopted 3 March 2026), amending Town Code §90.47 — read first-hand from the town's posted text ("Cemetery-Ordinance-2026").
2. Town of New Carlisle, cemetery department page (townofnewcarlisle.com/departments/cemetery) — the board and officers as of November 2026, read first-hand.
3. Olive Township, official site, cemeteries page — the town's management of the ground and the 802–890 West Michigan Street range.
4. Town of New Carlisle, Town Council minutes, 29 December 2014 — the Dale bequest, at minutes strength.
5. Historical Marker Database, Civil War Memorial, New Carlisle (m=76396), photographed by Duane Hall, 8 August 2014 — the 1909 inscription and the memorial's seat; contributor photograph, rights as stated there.
6. Indiana World War Gold Star Records (1921) — Swanson's burial.
7. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs gravesite file, as compiled in the public interment listings (file of 16 December 2022, compiled 17 April 2025) — at aggregator strength, with its mis-filings printed as cautions.