A Louisville, Kentucky TV station reported on cemetery that was found under a baseball field in Jeffersonville (Clark County), Indiana. Archaeologists have been brought in. I wonder if any area genealogists will be contributing to the documentation of this cemetery? Might some early genealogists or a DAR Chapter have done any research on this? According to the article, one archaeologist thinks that burials began in the early 1800s. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds.
Click here to read the WKLY TV report.
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Well, I'm hearing the Twilight Zone theme song right now. This headline caught my eye because I was reading through one of my ancestor's Civil War pension files literally an hour ago and discovered that he was discharged at a town I'd never heard of before: Jeffersonville, Indiana. So, after seeing your story, I went and looked the town up on Wikipedia, and found this paragraph there:
"Civil War
"The American Civil War increased the importance of Jeffersonville. Jeffersonville was one of the principal gateways to the South during the Civil War, due to its being directly across from Louisville. ... The third largest American Civil War hospital, Jefferson General Hospital was located in nearby Port Fulton (now within Jeffersonville) from 1864–1866,[6] as it was close to the river and Louisville. The original land was seized by the Government from the Honorable Jesse D. Bright, United States Senator, a sympathizer of the Confederate cause.[6] During the war it housed 16,120 patients in its 5,200 beds and was under the command of Dr. Middleton Goldsmith. A cemetery was built for fallen soldiers down the hill, but the wooden grave markers by 1927 had rotted away, causing the Jeffersonville city council to build a ball field over the cemetery, and not bothering to move the graves, located on Crestview Avenue. ..."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonville,_Indiana]
Guess those archaeologists should start their research on Wikipedia! ;-)
I have researched this.
It is actually quite complicated.
There is very little chance that there are any Civil War graves at that location.
The city "Grave Yard" (the location in question) was closed by ordinance in 1862.
The Jefferson General Hospital burials were removed (and records kept) to the National Cemetery in New Albany by the Quartermaster Dept.
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