Read time: 5 min.

I like writing about places that hide in plain sight, obviously, but some feel like they were meant to disappear. While I was digging into the history of Otterbein Cemetery and the hidden Madison County Infirmary burial ground nearby, I came across a curious mention of Nelson Cemetery. According to local lore, an earlier county home once stood nearby. Apparently, its residents were laid to rest in unmarked graves just west of the site¹. That was all the invitation I needed to start digging deeper.

Nelson Cemetery lies just a mile north of Highland Middle School in Madison County’s Richland Township, and its roots stretch back nearly two centuries. What began as a small family plot grew into a patchwork of as many as four distinct burial grounds². The first to be laid to rest was Tobitha Nelson, a young pioneer who died in 1833 at fifteen³. Over the years, twenty-three more Nelsons -along with in-laws and extended family- joined her beneath the rolling hills.

The original Nelson plot anchors the north end of the property, but the story doesn’t stop there. Another cemetery wound up taking shape alongside the Ashby Methodist Episcopal Church. Seventy years later, a group of ten local farmers stepped up and bought the church’s graveyard⁴. In doing so, they founded the Richland Township Cemetery Association. That third burial ground -still active today- spans about three acres between the old Nelson site and County Road 300 North. It bridges nearly two centuries of local history.

The combined property is one of the most scenic cemeteries I’ve ever visited. Beyond the Nelsons, the three cemeteries hold the remains of more than five hundred people. The total includes many Barneses, Bodles, Bonners, Dunhams, Founts, Keichers, Luttons, Scotts, and Vermillions. The number of Vermillion interments makes perfect sense, since U.C. Vermillion owned 252 acres that surrounded the site around 1880⁵.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Nelson Cemetery’s history is the poor farm cemetery, or “potter’s field⁶” said to sit nearby. Initially, I found one newspaper article that said it lies just west of Richland Cemetery and dates to when the county infirmary stood nearby⁷. I was familiar with the old county farm that once stood on West 10th Street west of Chesterfield, but I’d never heard of an earlier institution. 

Still, it existed. County histories relate that officials purchased a poor farm in the southern part of Richland Township⁸ on part of the Nelson property in 1866⁹. Unfortunately, the infirmary didn’t last long there: the land was sold in 1874, and the county bought land in Union Township three years later¹⁰. Some number of indigent people were buried without ceremony just west of Nelson Cemetery during the eight years the older county home stood there, but no one knows how many. 

Over the last 150 years, trees have crept across the west side of Nelson Cemetery, swallowing up any sign of what once lay beyond. The forest doesn’t give up its secrets easily: without mowing around with a ground-penetrating radar to reveal voids in the earth, you’d never guess a burial ground was ever there. Still, I found a couple of interesting clues that make the need for additional research more apparent. The first was the presence of what I assume were a pair of old gateposts leading away from Nelson Cemetery to the west. The arrangement is wired shut today.

The second thing that caught my eye was a headstone set apart from all the rest, just inches from the cemetery fence. It was a plain, time-worn marker half sunken into the earth. Strangely, the inscription faced the fence. I climbed around to get a better look, but the only legible trace was a single name fragment, “Thos.” 

Whoever Thomas was, he’s long since slipped through the cracks of recorded history, since none of my sources told me who he was. Even if I’d brought some newsprint, the marker was wedged too close to the fence and the nearby tree to attempt a rubbing. Thomas’s mystery remains intact, at least for now. 

Aside from that lone grave pushed to the margins, Nelson Cemetery leaves me with more questions than answers. Who else might lie in the woods just beyond the fence line? Was “Thos.” a former resident of the poor farm, laid to rest with little more than a simple stone? How many others were buried without even that? The old gate, the hidden marker, and the forest itself all suggest there’s more to this place than meets the eye. Today, the rest of Nelson Cemetery’s history remains a story waiting to be uncovered.

Sources Cited
1 Nelson Cemetery (n.d.). Pioneer Cemeteries and Their Stories, Madison County, Indiana. The Madison County Cemetery Commission [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved July 7, 2025. 
2 Bock, G. (1970, May 23). That ‘Nelson’ Cemetery Actually 3 Graveyards. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 4. 
3 (See footnote 1).
4 (see footnote 1). 
5 History of Madison County, Indiana (1880). Kingman Brothers [Chicago]. Book. 
6 (See footnote 1).
7 Bock, G. (1970, May 23). That ‘Nelson’ Cemetery Actually 3 Graveyards. The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 4. 
8 Harden, S. (1874). History of Madison County, Indiana, From 1820 to 1874. Samuel Harden [Markleville]. Book. 
9 (See footnote 6). 
10 (see footnote 4).