In thinking about veterans and their final resting places, we will focus on a few facts about the Southview/Oak Hill Cemetery.
This cemetery is also referred to as the Calvin Cemetery in some records — not to be confused with the Calvin cemetery located in Hamblen Township on the Spearsville/Peoga Road. However, there is a Calvin family section in this cemetery where you will find several of T.D. Calvin’s family.
Nashville’s earliest burial grounds, Southview and Oak Hill, two adjacent cemeteries, now have no distinguishable boundary between them. They are situated on a wooded hill at the northwest corner of Mound and Jefferson streets in Nashville. Vandalized and neglected, there are many broken and toppled stones. There are also many unmarked graves. Today, it is one of the most overgrown cemeteries in Brown County.
Members of the Brown County Cemetery Preservation group have spent several days working there, cutting trees and fallen tree branches, brush, briers, vines and taking out yuccas. They have also unearthed several headstones that have been covered with dirt and vegetation for years.
On the March 31, while digging up a yucca plant, they hit their first headstone, and then they found another and another until they turned up 14 buried stones and several partial stones before the day was over.
The stones unearthed belonged to Martha Jane Parker, Joseph Huntington, Walter Scott Huntington, Catherine Kelly, M. (Mason) Watts, Mary Ann Weddle, J.H. Watson, Deborah Watts, Lewis Chapman and Elizabeth Followell.
Many of Nashville’s movers and shakers are buried in this cemetery such as Capt. James Scott Hester, elected prosecuting attorney, elected state senator, elected representative state assembly, elected judge of the 9th Judicial Circuit, and Richard Coffey, pleas judge and state senator, just to mention a few.
Harrison and Barbara Lucas once owned part of the land where the Southview Cemetery is. The Harrison Lucas family is buried in this cemetery. You might recognize their daughter, Allie Lucas Ferguson; she was well known as the Ferguson House proprietor made famous by photographer Frank M. Hohenberger. Another daughter, Mollie Lucas, was also well known to have worked with her sister, Allie Ferguson. They served daily meals and ran a boarding house, the Ferguson House, that is on Franklin Street in Nashville.
The Brown County Cemetery Preservation Society is part of Peaceful Valley Heritage. The people who’ve been cleaning are Rhonda Dunn, Valerie (Lutes) Edmonds, Charlie Shaw, Jeannie Shaw, Terry Wilmot, Douglas Foreman and Mandy Wade. These folks are dedicated to the preservation of the county cemeteries. They are a nonprofit group and could always use donations.Donations may be sent to Peaceful Valley Heritage, P.O. Box 150, Nashville, IN 47448.
Please have a look at their Facebook page to learn more about the group. They welcome volunteers. A few of the cemetery preservation members are also members and volunteers at the Brown County Historical Society.
Research on this cemetery and others is ongoing at the historical society archives.
Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
