Preserving Our Cemeteries
~ story and photos by Jeff Tryon
Peaceful Valley Heritage and Preservation has been focusing efforts on some of the endangered parts of Brown County’ s rich historical heritage— its dozens of small pioneer cemeteries.
That effort is also shedding some historical light on the artists of Brown County. Henry Cross, a farmer and carver of tombstones, was probably the county’ s first resident artist.
“ One big thing we’ re trying to work on is the Henry Cross tombstones,” said Vivian Wolff of Peaceful Valley Heritage and Preservation.“ We are literally trying to save them— getting them up and out of the dirt and trying to preserve them. And we want to educate people.”
Cross, an early settler in Van Buren Township in southern Brown County, carved the iconic“ Stone Head” marker at the intersection of State Road 135 South and Bellsville Pike, which depicts a man’ s head on a
50 Our Brown County July / August 2016
rectangular block with directions and mileage carved below to direct visitors. It was one of three such markers Cross made in lieu of road maintenance work.
“ He also carved tombstones, and they were beautiful,” said Wolff.
Peaceful Valley Heritage has pledged $ 1,000 in seed money to work towards the repair and restoration of the Cross stones located in Van Buren township area cemeteries.
“ His stones are in the dirt, some are broken some are standing up,” Wolff said.“ A few of them have the face sloughed off from weather and the quality of the stone. You can imagine very intricate work all done by hand— a little girl, a little lamb. There are some that are symbolic, like a tree stump signifying a life cut short, and weeping willows. He did a lot of those.
“ I think as far as heritage goes, if we don’ t do something to save these cemeteries that are 150 to
170 years old, do some research and know the stories that go with them, we are really missing the boat.”
How many cemeteries are there in Brown County? Wolff admits she has“ no idea.”
Hamblen Township alone has around 30 cemeteries, and some of them are very small, like the six-grave Richardson Cemetery where one of Brown County’ s earliest judges is buried.
With so many cemeteries, many in neglect and disrepair, Peaceful Valley Heritage first picked the Sprunica church and cemetery as a project because it is close to the road and gets a lot of traffic from nearby Sprunica Elementary school.
There was once a small but thriving community where only the church and cemetery remain. For many years the county fair was held there.
“ There was a whole little community there, the one room church, a one room schoolhouse, the cemetery,
Stone Head road marker.