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Elkinsville, Indiana: The Town That Was · 1 of 13
Elkinsville, Indiana: The Town That Was
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The Cemetery and Physical Memory Anchors

Elkinsville, Indiana: The Town That Was Elkinsville Editorial Committee
cemetery memory pilgrimage stewardship diaspora landscape-identity

Key Principle

The Elkinsville Cemetery is the only community institution that survived the Monroe Reservoir displacement intact. When the post office closed (1941), the school closed (1958), the store closed, the church was sold to the Corps (1965), and the bridge was removed — the cemetery remained. This was not accidental: the Followell family's land donations established it, the 1974 formation of the Elkinsville Cemetery Association formalized stewardship as a deliberate post-displacement act, and individual families made repeated pilgrimages to graves for decades after the town was gone. When all other institutions are erased, the cemetery is where diaspora communities return, because it is where the dead — who cannot be displaced — anchor the living.

Why This Matters

The cemetery's survival created the social infrastructure for everything that came after. Robert Cross's account of the reunion's origin is precise: "Families who moved away in 1964 had, among other things, a common bond with the Elkinsville area aside from friendships and this was the Elkinsville Cemetery." The cemetery was the reason displaced families continued returning to the site, and those chance encounters on Memorial Day and family birthdays sustained social ties that eventually produced the formal reunion (first held August 1987), the bimonthly newsletter (November 1997), and the Monument of Hope (unveiled October 3, 1999). Remove the cemetery and the chain of reconvergence breaks at its first link.

The William Stogdill grave on Malcolm Lucas Hill complicates and deepens this pattern. William (1838–1865) was denied burial in Elkinsville Cemetery — probably because he returned from Confederate service with smallpox, though the book does not resolve this — and was instead hauled by sled to Malcolm Lucas Hill for burial. His grave was unmarked until 1908, when his nephew Bramble discovered it while hunting and his father James Harvey sold two cows to buy tombstones for William and his wife Amanda. The pilgrimages to that hilltop grave continued for nearly a century: Bramble visited in 1908, 1976, 1984, and 1987; by 1987 the grave required a conservation officer's four-wheel-drive truck to reach; nieces and nephews continued the pilgrimage in 1999 after Bramble's death. This excluded grave — outside the formal community cemetery — generated more sustained pilgrimage than many central graves.

Good Examples

Followell family land donations as founding act. Will Followell (Chester's grandfather) donated land for the new cemetery section; William Followell (Clyde's father) donated the original ground and an additional acre for the shelter house. Roy Followell mowed the cemetery for years; Chester and Mabel continued maintenance. The Elkinsville Cemetery Association incorporated on November 19, 1974 — a decade after the town's dissolution — formalizing stewardship at precisely the moment when the surviving community needed institutional form. (Chapter: Cemetery; Family Stories — Followell)

William Stogdill's excluded grave: a century of pilgrimages. Cemetery authorities refused burial in Elkinsville Cemetery in 1865 — either for smallpox contagion or Confederate status. James Harvey hauled the body by sled to Malcolm Lucas Hill. In 1908, sold a cow to buy a tombstone 43 years after death. In 1984, the family carried water, mortar, and wire up the hill to repair the fallen stone. By 1987, the site required a conservation officer's four-wheel-drive truck for access. After Bramble Stogdill's death (July 18, 1992, age 95), nieces and nephews continued the pilgrimage in 1999. Institutional exclusion from communal burial created private memorialization that outlasted the community itself. (Chapter: Family Stories — Bramble Stogdill; Family Stories — Cecil Stogdill)

Raleigh Deckard saves Deckard Cemetery from Corps road. Raleigh Deckard persuaded the Corps of Engineers to reroute a planned road down the ridge rather than paving it over Deckard Cemetery. He enlisted brother Tom, brother-in-law Claude Mercer, and nephew Ross Deckard. The cemetery survived; the road was rerouted. He then had the old Deckard Schoolhouse moved to the cemetery grounds and converted into a church — layering two community preservation acts onto the one site that was saved. (Chapter: Family Stories — Deckard)

Counterpoints

The cemetery's survival was partly structural, not purely chosen. The cemetery was on higher ground, away from the reservoir's flood zone. The Corps had no operational need to acquire it. Its survival was the accidental residue of hydraulic engineering, not a deliberate preservation decision by the federal government.

The excluded grave on Malcolm Lucas Hill reveals the cemetery's own limits. William Stogdill was denied the community burial that would have guaranteed ongoing family access. His grave on Malcolm Lucas Hill became accessible only by four-wheel drive by 1987. The cemetery's role as memory anchor depends on physical access — a condition that erodes as the surrounding land changes ownership and use.

Cemetery stewardship requires active maintenance to function. Over 60 family surnames appear in the Elkinsville Cemetery, but the Memorial List published in the book notes that tracking post-2000 deaths was incomplete "because diaspora made tracking impossible." The same dispersal that the cemetery was meant to resist eventually weakens the capacity to maintain it. (Chapter: Memorial List)

Key Quotes

"Families who moved away in 1964 had, among other things, a common bond with the Elkinsville area aside from friendships and this was the Elkinsville Cemetery." — Robert Cross, Chapter: Reunion

"James Harvey traded two cows for two tombstones — one for brother William, one for wife Amanda." — Elkinsville Editorial Committee, Chapter: Family Stories — Cecil Stogdill

"When I think of Elkinsville, I think of the freedom we all had... We don't have the freedom anymore like we had in Elkinsville." — Sharon (Lucas) Thompson, Chapter: Family Stories — Thompson/Lucas

"The ground on which the Millers made their living now belongs to the state as part of the Hoosier National Forest. The remainder is under water as part of Lake Monroe." — Elkinsville Editorial Committee, Chapter: Family Stories — Miller

Rules of Thumb

  • When documenting community displacement, identify the cemetery early: it is frequently the only institution that survives intact and serves as the physical anchor for all subsequent diaspora reconvergence.
  • Excluded graves — people denied communal burial — often generate more sustained pilgrimage obligation than central graves, because the exclusion creates a family debt that successive generations feel compelled to honor.
  • Cemetery associations formed years after displacement (Elkinsville Cemetery Association: 1974, ten years post-displacement) are deliberate community-building acts, not administrative housekeeping; treat them as milestones in the preservation narrative.
  • Physical access to graves erodes over time as land ownership and maintenance change; document both the cemetery and its access conditions, not only its contents.

Related References