Greenlawn Cemetery was a cemetery located in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

, from 1821 to 1931.Stephen J. Taylor,
Ghoul Busters: Indianapolis Guards its Dead: Or Does It?
, ''Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana's Digital Newspaper Program'' (January 24, 2015).

History

Greenlawn Cemetery was established in 1821, as part of the original layout of the city of Indianapolis. It was located along the White River just north of what would later become Kentucky Avenue. Greenlawn was the initial burial place of over 1100 Hoosier pioneers, 1200 Union soldiers and 1600 Confederate prisoners of war. However, the cemetery suffered from

vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The term f ...

of tombstones,

grave robbing Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave (burial), grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefact (archaeology), artefacts or personal property. A ...

, overcrowding, and regular

flooding A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrolog ...

of the White River. At the time of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, Indianapolis had no cemetery specifically designated as a burial place for

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

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.Wissing, pp. 1–2. 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) who established

Crown Hill Cemetery Crown Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 700 West 38th Street in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana. The privately owned cemetery was established in 1863 at Strawberry Hill, whose summit was renamed "The Crown", a high poi ...

on October 22, 1863. The privately owned cemetery, northwest of downtown, borders present-day Thirty-Eighth 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.Wissing, p. 33. 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

. 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.

References

{{Monuments in Indianapolis Cemeteries in Indiana Former cemeteries 1821 establishments in Indiana