A local cemetery that last year marked its bicentennial will be the focus of a restoration next weekend by the Joseph Hart Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
Members of the chapter and volunteers will gather from 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Saturday, May 7, for a work day at Liberty Cemetery, located north of Columbus Municipal Airport off County Road 500N west of Marr Road. Volunteers will weed, mow, clean and restore grave markers.
The cemetery, established in 1821, is among the oldest in Bartholomew County and is the final resting place for veterans dating to the American Revolutionary War.
The Joseph Hart Chapter last month announced it had received a $5,300 grant from the national DAR organization to restore gravestones of veterans at the cemetery. Among the earliest pioneers buried there are Benjamin Start (died 1822), Benidictus Starr (died 1827) and Enos Owens (died 1826). All were contemporaries of Joseph Cox, widely considered the first white settler of Bartholomew County. Cox, who died in 1851 at the age of 85, is buried just a few miles to the south in a small plot off Middle Road north of Rocky Ford Road.
Local DAR member Angel Walker said people who would like to help can come to the cemetery for the work day. Cleaning supplies will be provided, but volunteers are asked to bring water jugs because there is no source of water at the cemetery.
Walker and her son Luke also recently assisted DAR in the restoration of a headstone for another local Revolutionary War veteran, Thomas Cook, who is buried in Sandcreek Cemetery. According to the Joseph Hart Chapter’s Facebook page, Cook was born in North Carolina in 1754 and died in Bartholomew County in 1844.
