Greenlawn Cemetery (Indianapolis, Indiana)

Greenlawn Cemetery
Map showing conceptual design of Greenlawn Cemetery, from the Marion County Assessor's plat book, 1857-1864
Details
Established	1821
Abandoned	1931
Location	Indianapolis, Indiana
Country	United States
Coordinates	39.7599°N 86.1704°W / 39.7599; -86.1704
Type	Public
Find a Grave	Greenlawn Cemetery

Greenlawn Cemetery was one of the first public cemeteries in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, existing from 1821 to 1931. It was located along the White River just north of what would later become Kentucky Avenue and acted as the initial burial place of over 1100 Hoosier pioneers, 1200 Union soldiers and 1600 Confederate prisoners of war. The cemetery suffered from vandalism of tombstones, grave robbing, overcrowding, and the regular flooding of the White River.

History

Greenlawn Cemetery was developed in 1821 due to an increase in death rates as a result of malaria outbreaks and flooding in the surrounding Indianapolis area. Alexander Ralston, the Scottish-American surveyor who designed Indianapolis, with the help of four early citizens of Indianapolis (James M. Ray, James Blake, Daniel Shaffer, and Matthias Nowland) mapped out a cemetery in the original city plans on a four-acre (1.6 ha) plot beyond the southwest end of Kentucky Avenue and near the White River. At the time, this graveyard was known as Old Burying Ground. Other cemeteries were added around the original plot over the next 40 years. These surrounding cemeteries were known as the New Burying Ground (added in 1834), the North Burying Ground (added in 1852), and, finally, the Greenlawn Cemetery (added in 1860). All of these interconnected cemeteries ultimately coalesced into the 25-acre (10 ha) large graveyard known as the Greenlawn Cemetery.

Schaffer and Nowland, two of the men who helped to select the site of the Old Burying Ground, were among the first Indianapolis residents interred at the city cemetery. Schaffer died only a week after the site had been picked in 1821 and Nowland died a year later. Black and White resident of Indianapolis alike were buried in the Greenlawn Cemetery, but their plots were still segregated, with the remains of Black residents located at the far west end. Cheney Lively, who is believed to be Indianapolis's first permanent Black resident and the first Black property owner in the city, was bought a plot by her employer and the city of Indianapolis's designer, Alexander Ralston. Ralston himself was also buried in the Old Burying Grounds after his death in 1827, but his remains were later moved to Crown Hill Cemetery by the public. There is no record of Lively's remains being relocated. According to the Indianapolis Locomotive in reference to the Old Burying Grounds, "The old ground was laid out on the foundation of the city, and has been used ever since, graves being dug promiscuously, according to the selections made by the friends of the deceased."

The New Burying Ground was a six-acre (2.4 ha) lot added to the east of the Old Burying Grounds in 1834 that was modeled after the New Haven Burying Ground in Connecticut. Around this time in the 1830s, headstones were mostly made up of simply carved stone and marble tablets; however, grave markers evolved to be more elaborate in the cemetery after the economic boom that followed the construction of the Madison, Indianapolis and Lafayette Railroad in 1847. With the new materials being brought into the city via the railroad, local stone yards began advertising finer imported stones for grave markers and Indianapolis undertakers such as Weaver and Williams started producing new styles of coffins for consumers.

At the time of the American Civil War, Indianapolis had no cemetery specifically designated as a burial place for Union soldiers who died in camps and hospitals near Indianapolis. During the war, when the city served as a major transportation hub and as a camp for Union troops, the soldiers who died at Indianapolis were initially buried at Greenlawn Cemetery. Confederate prisoners who died at Camp Morton, a large prisoner-of-war camp north of Indianapolis, were also interred at Greenlawn. By August 1863 Greenlawn was nearing capacity from wartime casualties and facing encroachment from industrial development. To provide additional land for burials, a group of local businessmen formed a Board of Corporators (trustees) that established Crown Hill Cemetery on October 22, 1863. The privately owned cemetery, northwest of downtown, borders present-day 38th Street. In 1866, the U.S. government authorized a National Cemetery for Indianapolis in Section 10 of Crown Hill and made arrangements for the removal of the soldiers from Greenlawn.

Within a few months the bodies of Union soldiers who were buried at Greenlawn were moved to the National Cemetery. On October 19, 1866, the remains of Matthew Quigley, a former member of Company A, Thirteenth Regiment, became the first of several hundred Union soldiers from Greenlawn to be interred at Crown Hill. By November 1866, the bodies of 707 soldiers had been moved from Greenlawn to Crown Hill.

Closure

Due to its deficiencies, Greenlawn was closed to new burials in 1890, and by 1899 efforts to relocate it entirely were underway. During the relocation process, it was discovered that most of the graves had been robbed at some point, with the bodies being stolen, likely for use as subjects for examination and dissection at area medical schools. Most of the bodies that were present were relocated to Crown Hill Cemetery. In 1931 industrial development around Greenlawn Cemetery required the bodies of the Confederate prisoners to be moved to Crown Hill, where they were interred in a mass grave, known as Confederate Mound, in Section 32 at Crown Hill.