Daily Yellowstone Journal

FAMILY GRAVEYARDS.

Lonesome Sights That Are to Be Seen
on Southern Indiana Farms.

"There is no place like southern
Indiana for graveyards," said William
Yakey, of Bloomfield. "Now
that section including Green, Mon
roe, Brown and Sullivan counties is
a wonderland to traverse. It looks
as though the old settlers of fifty
years ago wanted each one to have a
graveyard of his own. Every mile
or two, often far from any roadway,
totally inaccessible to wagon without
laying waste the fences, you
come upon little rock walled or rail
bound enclosures containing the
death of one family. Father, mother
and several children lie there, and
none others.

"These places have long been for
saken and forgotten. Weeds though
in profusion and high the wind and
rain stained tombstones, from view.
Often with a companion I have en
tered one of those little enclosures.
Trampled and torn out the weeds and
righted the five or six headstones
that had fallen and buried even the
inscribed virtues of the dead into the
wormy earth.

"These people had no country
churchyard; no preacher except
the visiting parson who came month
ly on horseback. They had no fu
neral in the present sense of the word.
Plain wooden boxes were used for cof
fins and often the sturdy youth of the
family made the coffin for the dead
parent or relative. These little spots
were dear to those families. One can
see that by the loving little inscrip
tions and decorations. When they
were all dead no one remained to
care for them and they fell into de
cay and ruin.

"They are lonesome sights those
little groups of white pillars. In the
winter when the trees are bare and
the grass dead I have seen flocks of
crows coming and circling about the
clump of trees that usually cluster
about those places. The bitter wind
moans through the crackling branch
es, and those crows wheel about and
caw and croak until the world seems
truly a place of sorrow and death."

Chicago Globe