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Before 1926–2026
Woodlawn existed as a burying ground before the record can date it, and its legal course is the best-documented institution in this section. The Indiana Supreme Court's special finding of facts states the ground's position in June 1926: "certain citizens and residents of St. Joseph County, Indiana, were owners of burial lots in a certain cemetery in said county known as Woodlawn Cemetery; a portion of these lots were then occupied by the dead." A majority of the lot owners petitioned the board of commissioners of St. Joseph County to incorporate the cemetery under the cemetery-association statute (§§ 4557 et seq., Burns 1926), and on 19 July 1926, by order of the board, the cemetery was incorporated under the name Walkerton Woodlawn Cemetery Association. The ground's founding or plat date before 1926 was not found in any source reached — the federal data seats Civil War-era burials there, which are burial dates and not a founding date, and are not printed as one — and the gap is named in this section's closing article. The association governed itself as the statute contemplated: directors elected by the lot owners, bylaws empowering them to levy assessments on the lots for "improving, maintaining, protecting and enlarging its boundaries, beautifying its grounds," notice mailed by the secretary at least twenty days before the payment date. On 19 March 1928 the directors levied two dollars a lot, payable to the association treasurer at the State Bank of Walkerton by 20 April 1928 — and the lot owners William S. and Sarah E. Paul, holders of ninety-five lots in one action and assessed on a hundred and three in the other, litigated the assessments to the Indiana Supreme Court, which held in February 1933 that the association was "a duly and legally incorporated cemetery association under the laws of the State of Indiana" and affirmed. The ownership verdict is therefore clean and prints at official-record strength: before June 1926, a lot-owners' ground; from 19 July 1926, an incorporated cemetery association; and no source reached shows any later change — no transfer to the Town of Walkerton, no dissolution, no trustee takeover. The town's own code aligns: the American Legal library for Walkerton carries no cemetery chapter, no cemetery board, and no sexton provision, the only cemetery-bearing text being the council's generic power at § 30.003(L) to "purchase and maintain cemeteries" — a power, not an exercise of one.
The ground is administered in north and south halves, a structure three independent records agree on: the 1939 graves registration keys North Woodlawn and South Woodlawn separately; the federal veterans' data files burials under both names; and the ground's World War II memorial stands, in the marker record's words, "in Woodlawn Cemetery near the center of the cemetery section south of US 6." Plot references in the aggregator data name the ground's growth rings — Paul's 1st Addition, Paul's 2nd East, Paul's 2nd West, in Sections A and B — the Paul name of the 1933 litigation running through the platted additions, printed as aggregator evidence of expansion areas and no more. The memorial's coordinates (41° 28.098′ N, 86° 29.589′ W) and the place-data coordinates agree within about eighty metres and sit the ground at U.S. 6 and Industrial Park Drive; the Census geocoder seats the tested point inside the Town of Walkerton, in Lincoln Township. The ground's acreage was not found, and no size is stated.
Sources
- Paul et al. v. Walkerton Woodlawn Cemetery Association, 204 Ind. 693 (Ind. 1933), Nos. 25687 and 26,245 — full text (case.law) — official record.
- Town of Walkerton Code of Ordinances, American Legal library, § 30.003(L) (2005 Code, § 11.03) — official record, for the power's existence.
- HMdb, Walkerton World War II Memorial (marker 75605): "in Woodlawn Cemetery … south of US 6," coordinates as printed; erected 1947 by Mothers of World War II, Walkerton Unit 140.
- Place/directory data (50 Roosevelt Rd, coordinates); PeopleLegacy (Industrial Park Dr plot data) — aggregator; Legacy.com obituary directory (Industrial Park Drive and US 6).
- Census geocoder point test, 11 November 2026, as in the frame article.