Read time: 5 min.

The weathered headstones of pioneer cemeteries hold hidden pieces of history. I’ve been to a handful of them over the years, but no grave has stayed with me like the triple headstone at Wayne County’s New Garden Friends Cemetery. Standing before it, I felt a deep disbelief in learning the story of three lives lost in an instant. Some graves mark long, full lives. This one -three, really- speaks of futures cut short before they even began.

Quaker meetings at New Garden -just south of Newport, now known as Fountain City- began around 1811 after settlers came to Indiana from the Carolinas and established the Whitewater Monthly Meeting in 1809¹. Records indicate that the New Garden Monthly Meeting was set off in a log cabin on March 18, 1815². The congregation built an inexpensive frame building three years later. In 1858, they replaced it with a brick structure that’s still standing today³. 

A two-room schoolhouse was erected on the property in 1866⁴. The building was later renovated into a parsonage and is now available for overnight stays! This huge fan of old schoolhouses finally got his chance to spend the night in one four years ago, when my mom, my aunt, and I decamped to follow the footsteps of two Quaker ancestors who went to Mississippi and Arkansas to teach freedmen from 1865 to 1867. 

My room at the schoolhouse overlooked the New Garden graveyard, and my eyes were drawn to the eerie triple tombstone every night before bed. Lit up by fireflies, it stood like a beacon in the darkness. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had a story to tell, and I eventually uncovered it: the marker honors the short lives of Martha, Charlotte, and Esther Hull, lost in an instant to a tragedy almost too sudden to comprehend.

Martha, Charlotte, and Esther were connected by family and fate. Their story took a tragic turn on August 13, 1834, at the home of Jehiel Hull⁵ in Newport. Charlotte, Jehiel’s wife, had fallen ill with fever and was resting in an upstairs bedroom. His sisters, Martha and Esther, stayed by her side to offer comfort⁶. None of them knew that their final moments were about to unfold. 

Without warning, a bolt of lightning struck the house with devastating force. In an instant, Martha and Esther were gone, lost before their family could even grasp what had happened⁷. Charlotte passed away less than an hour later, apparently from her illness⁸. Imagine Jehiel Hull rushing upstairs to check on his sick wife, only to find not just her but his two sisters -his entire world in that moment- taken in a single heartbeat! The shock and grief must have been unimaginable. A home once filled with voices and warmth was suddenly left in silence.

What was it like in the days that followed? Did the neighbors gather in shock, struggling to comprehend the tragedy? Did Jehiel Hull find solace in his faith, or did the weight of loss make that impossible? Whatever happened in the aftermath, Hull remarried about a year after the tragedy. He lived for another four decades before passing away in 1874 at the age of seventy-nine. He and his second wife, Polly, are buried at Fountain Park Cemetery in Winchester⁹.

Sixteen miles south, the story of his first wife and sisters remains, etched into the chilling triple tombstone at New Garden Cemetery. Nearly two centuries after they were put to rest, the Hulls’ somber grave isn’t just a marker for those who stop and pay their respects- it’s a testament to the sudden, heartbreaking loss that must have reverberated through the Hull family and their Quaker community. Even now, standing before the headstone, it’s hard not to feel the weight of their story.

Sources Cited
1 Short, S. (1968, September 21). New Garden Friends Church Has Inspired Several Artists. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 6. 
2 “Where Plain & Simple Becomes Just Plain Beautiful” (n.d.). The Historic Meeting House At New Garden. Web. Retrieved March 2, 2025. 
3 (See footnote 2). 
4 Where Plain & Simple Becomes Just Plain Beautiful (n.d.). The Historic Meeting House At New Garden. Web. Retrieved march 2, 2025. 
5 Newport, Indiana (1834, August 30). The Monmouth Democrat [Freehold]. p. 3. 
6 Rhoads, E. H. (1939, July 16). Headstone Recalls Bolt That Killed Three. The Richmond Palladium-Item. p. 20. 
7 (See footnote 2).
8 (See footnote 1). 
9 Jethiel Hull (n.d.). FindaGrave. Web. Retrieved March 4, 2025.