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Hi David,
John Longfellow, Jr. settled on a farm in New Garden Township, Wayne County, Indiana. In the Richmond, Indiana Palladium Item dated October 23, 1932, his picture, along with others, was on the front page and listed as one of the seven Wayne County pioneers who lived past 100 years. He was 103 when he died.
He purchased and cleared three farms on the northeast boundary of New Garden Township in Wayne County now known as the Boundary Road.
He and other family members were buried on a portion of land taken from one of the farms in a cemetery known as "Friendship". The only thing I knew about this Friendship cemetery was from Mildred (Longfellow) Bishop-Duke (my father’s cousin) who wrote, "The cemetery today is unkept and overgrown with no access since the original road has been changed. The fence is down and cattle tramping down the stone."
This is from the Indiana State Library Genealogy Division Cemetery Database: Location –Sec 19, T18, R14 New Garden Twp.
I found a web site that has information about this cemetery, now known as the Friendship Baptist Cemetery - http://www.geocities.com/friendshipbaptistcemetery/index.html. It lists and has pictures of the stone of our ancestor John and the foot stone of Sarah Longfellow (her head stone missing), the last child of John and Mary (Harper) Longfellow, born Feb. 3, 1848, died Oct. 24, 1850, just a baby. Betsy and William and his wife Sarah (Rowe) Longfellow were also buried there but their stones no longer exist.
Tim and Sabrina Benner are the Indiana Pioneer Cemeteries Restoration Project coordinators for Wayne County (click the email link to correspond). Tim sent this information on March 9, 2005 –
I am sorry to say that I have not begun this restoration project yet. Unfortunately, the shape of this pioneer cemetery is not uncommon in Wayne County. Before winter hit, I had been working on restoring three cemeteries (about seventy more to go). The Friendship cemetery is only about a mile from my house. You are correct. The cemetery is on Boundary Rd. It is about a hundred feet out from the road in a wooded area. The good news is that there are no longer any cows in the adjacent field. John's stone was one that I remembered… him dying at age 103. The stone as you can see is not in that good of shape. It is in four pieces. The good news is that the pieces are in good shape and I am able to fix this stone. We use a stone epoxy to fix the broken pieces. The difficult thing about this project is that the stones are scattered all over the place and I think that they have been moved over the years. We like to reset the stones in their original place if at all possible. There may also be more stones buried under the ground. I would also like to probe to see if we can find more.
This cemetery has been deeded away from the surrounding land, so the township trustee is currently in charge of its care. According to state law, they should be preserving and maintaining this cemetery, but as it is in most of the townships in all of the counties in Indiana, it is not being done.”
My wife and I have transcribed another cemetery that is about a mile or two northeast of Friendship. It is Arba cemetery.
Longfellow Amanda P 1885 1916
Longfellow Andrew J 1853 1929
Longfellow Cornelius 7 6 1827 2 17 1901
Longfellow Harry C 1873 1932
Longfellow James K
Longfellow James A 1839 1910
Longfellow James 3 28 1800 9 6 1871
Longfellow Julia Ann 4 11 1829 6 24 1914
Longfellow Lydia Mills 9 18 1828 11 16 1865
Longfellow Nancy 9 9 1798 12 24 1886
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