Fitzgerald

Family's private Burial-place on the old H. G. McNitt farm

in the north part of northeast quarter of northeast quarter of section 14 of T. 27 No, R. 1 W., in northeastern Jefferson township of western Cass County , Indiana .

Somewhere in what is today (May 2, 1941) a beautiful fifteen-acre grassy pasture (near the east edge of which is now a gravel pit.  The precise location is apparently not now known.

 The western limit of this pasture is marked by a north-and- south county highway.  It's southern limit is marked by a still (1941) identifiable [but long since closed and abandoned] former east-and-west road.  This pasture is now (1941) owned by Homer Gray, who on July 15, 1936, obtained it from James Gray; but it formerly was a part of the R. G. McNitt farm.

In this grassy pasture today, we find no evidence of either a cemetery or even a house, except that about 100 feet north of the abandoned road, and on the east side of the north-south road, we find a couple of lilac-bushes and cedar-trees, the remains of an old well, and some stones which plainly indicates that a house (or at least a cabin) formerly was here, a statement which is confirmed by Kingman Bros.  1878 map of this township.

According to a local historian, a Mr. Fitzgerald (and his family) lived somewhere in this small plot of ground at about the close of the Civil War, and was known by older residents of the vicinity to have laid to their final rest, in 1866, two of his children who had died and in the corner of his garden," not far from his home.  These two children's graves are said never to have been marked, unless it was by wooden slabs which have long since entirely disappeared.

Fieldwork on this burial-place was done by Robert W. Barr, of Rural Route one, Logansport , a lifelong resident of this neighborhood, and Robert B. Whitsett, Jr. of the L'ANGUILLE VALLEY MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION at the nearby city of Logansport .  Although there is today no evidence of any garden in this grassy tract, these fieldworkers, after exploring the entire vicinity, are of the opinion that the garden may have been on the high ground just south or southeast of the site of the previously mentioned house, and between that house and the abandoned eastwest road, --- or, in other words, near the southwestern corner of this sixteen-acre pasture.

Here the land drops quite noticeably to the eastward; and one gets a rather fine view of the surrounding country.  But whether or not the two graves are in this, or some entirely different, portion of this tract, is purely a matter of conjecture.  Much interviewing of the "oldest of the old-timers" of this region has failed to disclose the exact location of these two graves, or even any information as to who these Fitzgeralds may have been.  Search of deed-records indicates that they probably were tenants rather than land-owners; and the present reporter has not been successful in a somewhat cursory effort to link Fitzgerald families now residing at the county-seat city of Logansport with these Jefferson township (western Cass County ) early settlers.  The digging of the Wabash & Erie Canal brought many Irish to Jefferson township and it seems possible that these Fitzgeralds may have been among them.

This report was input by Rebecca Miller February 15, 2007 for the Cass County INGenWeb Project.