Stomping Around the Hills of Southern Indiana

After spending the past three days stomping through cemeteries in the hills of southern Indiana, I thought I would share some of the really neat things we have discovered. We being me, my older brother, and my older sister. We have spent the last few days researching our genealogy in the historical societies of Jefferson and Ripley Counties in Indiana and the Kentucky Historical Center in Frankfurt, Kentucky and have come across some very interesting stories and after the historical societies closed and we went searching for the gravesites of our ancestors.

We have scoured through wills and land deeds, births and deaths, newspaper stories and discovered many interesting things about our ancestors. We have driven off-road in vehicles no designed for such terrain and hiked through the hills and forests in search of family farms and ruins of family homes. We have violated no trespassing signs and trapsed across private property to find cemeteries located at the edge of civilization. We drove to the end of the world and took a right.

We visited six cemeteries over the past three days and found the graves of four great-great-great grandparents. We have rubbed headstones to make them more legible and created pencil reliefs of others when we could not get them clean enough.


We have uncovered interesting stories and facts about the people we call family. We have learned much about who we are and where we came from. Here are a few interesting tidbits.

• Four of the first 20 settlers in Jefferson County, Indiana are of our lineage.


• Our Great-Great-Great Grandparents donated land to a church which was later used for the Risk-Buchanan family reunions. The church burnt down in 1971. The original deed to the land stipulated if the church ever abandoned the property, it was to revert back to the family's heirs.


• The naming pattern of the 19th century was:
  
  
  
  • 1st son after father's father
  
  
  • 2nd son after mother's father
  
  
  • 3rd son after father
  
  


• Our family took care of each other. When a husband died, a brother usually stepped in married the widow to take care of her and the children. This appears to be a common practice in many family histories.


• Rumor has it that one of our Great-Great-Great Grandfathers didn't trust banks. He buried all of his money on his property for safe keeping. It has never been found.

It was a very enjoyable and productive trip. When we returned to Indianapolis, I helped my brother pack up his moving van before returning home to Lori and James. Both were very happy to see me. James seemed to have changed so much in so little time. It will be a while before I leave him for that long again.