My mom and I were speeding home after a visit to Liberty Township’s abandoned Mt. Pleasant Church when something caught our eye- a small hillside burial ground about a mile and a half east. We both filed it away, but it took a few years before curiosity finally pulled us back. What we found was Orr Cemetery. It’s a place you’d only notice if you happened to be looking at just the right moment. Fortunately, we had been.
Members of the Orr family were among Delaware County’s earliest pioneers. James Orr, Senior, settled in Delaware Township in 1838, the same year his sons Joseph and Samuel purchased land in Liberty Township1. Samuel Orr, who died in 1876 at sixty-four, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Civil War2. Another family member, William Orr, served as Colonel. An attorney, he died at twenty-nine in 18673.
In total, eighty-two people are said to be buried at Orr Cemetery. The oldest marker appears to be for Sidney Tharp, the six-year-old son of Alexander and Bathsheba Tharp, who died in 1840. Sarah Orr, the first of twenty-five members of the family to be buried beneath the hillside plot, was interred two months later. The most recent grave, of Martha J. Campbell Orr, dates to 1906. Orr Cemetery hasn’t seen an interment in nearly 120 years!
That’s not to say the place hasn’t experienced its fair share of drama. In 1911, George T. Orr leased part of his property -a quarry- to the Dayton and Muncie Traction Company. Access to mine its gravel came with the caveat that the company not dig close enough to the cemetery for any graves to fall into the pit. Apparently, the traction company didn’t follow orders: the soil caved in several feet from the cemetery’s bounds! Orr sued4, but the outcome of the legal battle has been lost to time.
The corner of Delaware County that Orr Cemetery occupies isn’t home to much these days, but it was a thriving little community at in the nineteenth century. A Presbyterian church was built near the cemetery in 18525. Liberty Township’s District 2 schoolhouse, also known as Orr, was completed in 1878 about a mile west6. Unfortunately, neither structure remains today.
Although it may be small and easy to miss from the road, Orr Cemetery carries a weight that far outsizes its hillside footprint. Each marker ties families from Liberty Township’s earliest days into the record of Delaware County’s past. Places like Orr Cemetery serve as reminders that history often lingers along the backroads- just waiting for someone to zoom past on another errand, return years later, and take a closer look.
Sources Cited
1 Helm, T. B. (1881). Liberty Township. In History of Delaware County, Indiana: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. book, Kingman Brothers.
2 Greene, D. (1957, May 25). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 6.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Orr family Cemetery Hurt By Gravel Digging (1911, November 23). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 1.
5 Churches Built of Hewn Logs (1930, April 30). The Muncie Star. p. 7.
6 Griffing, B. N. (1887). Mt. Pleasant Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana. map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.
There is something about my in-born sense of order that suggests a state cemetery manager who could steer people to unused plots in these old cemeteries. But then they wouldn’t be what they are, so never mind.
Part of me wants to be buried in the oldest and most obscure.
Only part of you? If you did that you could pick several! 😁
Haha, good point! One limb for each.