A few weeks back, I set off for Moonville to check on one of my favorite artesian wells after I couldn’t shake some troubling rumors I’d heard. At first, my heart sank- it looked like it had stopped flowing! After a closer look, though, I realized that the well was still going, just in a different way than I’d expected. That only fueled my curiosity, so I made my way to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in rural Delaware County to see if the well there was still active. It was stopped on Saturday, but something tells me it’ll be back.
The flowing well at Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery is one of Delaware County’s best-known hidden gems, if there is such a thing. It’s also the second well I ever found. Tucked at the base of the cemetery, it sits twenty-four feet below the church that crowns the hill above. That chapel, built in 1871 on land donated by P.A. Helvie1, has its own deep roots: the congregation traces back another thirty years when James Van Matre set aside a lot for a combined church and schoolhouse2. The grounds are a place shaped by history, with water that has (almost) always flowed.
Mount Pleasant Church Cemetery is the final resting place for many prominent local families -Isanogels, Kilgores, Priests, and Van Matres among them- and its oldest grave dates back to 1840. I’ll admit that the idea of drinking from a well in a cemetery might raise some eyebrows, but don’t worry- its casing extends hundreds of feet below any burials. Let me tell you, though, that the cemetery’s water is the coldest, crispest, and best-tasting of any of the thirty-some artesian wells I’ve visited. That is… when it decides to flow!
The Mount Pleasant Church Cemetery well has a mind of its own. No matter the season or recent rainfall, it only flows about half of the time I drive by. Back in the early ’80s, church trustees temporarily shut it off due to reports of vandalism and late-night mischief3. Still, the well was gushing at full force when I stopped for pictures a couple of years ago. Saturday, it was bone-dry.
Little unsettles me more than hearing rumors of a reliable flowing well running out of water. Luckily, I have a feeling that the one at Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery isn’t down for good. I hope it’s just being as temperamental as ever! The red stain of iron nearby tells me it hasn’t been long since the well stopped, and for all I know, it could be bubbling up right now.
I guess there’s only one way to find out…it’s time for a quick trip to go check on it again!
Sources Cited
1 Helm, T. B. (1881). Mount Pleasant Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (pp. 268–269). book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Delaware County, Indiana. (1843, April 7). Deed Book 7. p. 386.
3 Gerhart, L. (1982, September 18). Artesians about in Delaware County – wells, that is. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3.
