Epworth Cemetery

Submitted by PATRICIA A. ROBINSON COLE. For additional list of people buried in this cemetery, click here, for Tamara's page. Make sure you scroll down to the middle of the page.

Dear Marsha, and Tamara:
I have so much information on the Epworth United Methodist Church Cemetery. Also known as the Epworth Cemetery. It goes back about 20 years, give or take. I have decided to organize my facts, by year. Beginning with my first contacts with the church and coming forward to the present time. I have copies of court records. I went to Indianapolis to the Health Department and researched their records. I have some copies of the required permits to move the bodies and reinter them.

When the Cemetery was originally dismantled the church was required to get permission from Indianapolis and through the courts. I have most, if not all, of that. I do understand what you have published on your sites is probably the best information that was available to you. It has caused me to realize the people who were buried there, and their families, deserve to have the details of what happened to this cemetery, their remains, and markers told. Their final resting place was paid for to help fund the church, and for them to be buried on what should have been believed to be sacred ground. In my heart I feel that the spirits of the deceased cry out for justice. The only "justice" there may be is in the telling of their story. I see my putting their circumstances in writing as speaking for them.

The headstones from the Epworth United Methodist Church Cemetery, were moved twice prior to their final move and destruction by the church. I know, for fact, the bodies of Isaac N. Shelton and his wife: Mary Hellen Hall Williams Shelton, and the deceased names listed on the monument I saved, were never removed from the ground. The son of Isaac and Mary: Homer Shelton went to the cemetery the day bodies were to be moved and he would not allow those graves to be disturbed. His daughter (my cousin), Laura Shelton Fetscher and I had conversations about this event. She remembered her dad, Homer, doing just what I said. Laura, another cousin, and I are the ones who paid to have Rose Hill Cemetery. pour the cement pad that our monument was put on, by the church. The only reason the church did this for us, is because I raised so much fuss about what was done. Like disrespectfully dumping all those beautiful markers at the bottom of the hill in Rose Hill. They were treated like they were unwanted garbage. As I said before, Rose Hill did not agree for the Epworth Church Deacons to do that. Rose Hill did cause the church to immediately remove them from their cemetery property. Which Rose Hill is to be commended for.

The church ran articles in the Warrick Co. newspapers for families, whose people the markers were from, to come to the new church (Lincoln Ave and Epworth Rd.) and get them. Some family members, I understand did. Others came and got them, then returned them because they didn't know what to do with them after they saved them from the wrecking ball. My monument was retrieved from the bottom of the Rose Hill hill, before the church moved the rest of them to the Epworth United Methodist Church new property. Any stones left, which I understand there was many, were brutalized and buried in a hole in a, so called, memorial space in the front of the church. A flower garden was built on top of the space. If you were to go there, you would have to look for the flat marker the church placed there.

The church negotiated with Rose Hill to place the memorial monument that now stands along side the drive way. Again, I stress...there are no remains placed there. The church took pictures of the markers they removed from the old church property, Hwy. 66 and Epworth Roads. The pictures were organized in an album and placed in the Newburgh Public Library.

The Circle "S" gas station and party store now stands where the original Epworth Church Cemetery was located. By the way it is my belief, until I see something different, that the owners of the Circle "S" Corporation were not fully aware of the circumstances of the cemetery when they purchased the Epworth property. I base this on my contacts with the Circle "S" Corporation.

I am telling you this much of what I know because of your cemetery posting on Marsha's Warrick Co. Web., and that of Tamara's Cemetery Lists, with regard to the Epworth Cemetery and Rose Hill Cemetery. It is mis-information that: "The remains of what was found in the graves were moved to a common grave near the entrance of Rose Hill north of Newburgh. There is a marker with the names found in the Epworth cemetery at the grave site in Rose Hill. There may not have been much if anything left after a hundred years or so. I don't think there were any bodies that were moved. Just what bones and remains that could be found in the gravesites."

"Gilbert Schmitt's Note:
Epworth Cemetery only had about 80 people buried there." I believe this statement to be incorrect also.. However, I am in the process of gathering the names of those persons who were actually buried in the Epworth Church Cemetery. It is my intention to document each name, as much as is possible. I have a list of names that was provided to me from a minister of the church. I was told the list was made by church persons walking the cemetery and writing off the inscriptions. As genealogists we surly agree the potential is here that not every grave had a marker. Early church records were poorly maintained.

I will appreciate your reply about this E mail to you. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have, while I am in the process of writing the story of the Epworth United Methodist Church Cemetery.
Sincerely, PATRICIA A. ROBINSON COLE

THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY GRAVES AT EPWORTH CEMETERY. THE NAMES BELOW ARE PEOPLE THAT WERE ORIGINALLY INTERRED.

Great Granddaughter of: ISAAC NEWTON SHELTON

Hurley, Frances   Mar 12, 1907 - Nov 17, 1907, 8 mo, child of Ulysses Hurley & Rosa Hall

Hurley, Frank  May 28, 1905 - Jun 22, 1905, 25 days, son of Hyess Hurley -Ulysses & Rosa Hall

Hurley, Infant   Mar 14, 1902 - Mar 20, 1902, 5 days, infant of George Hurley & Lulu Armstrong

Hurley, Lusenda   Nov 18, 1902 - Jan 1, 1903, 1 mo, child of Ulysses Hurley & Rosa Hall

Additional Websites:

The Tie that Binds

Epworth United Methodist Church Cemetery Website