Madison County Historical Society

 Seybert Cemetery

 The Seybert Cemetery in Fall Creek township is a good example of how a respect for the past can co-exist with the needs of the present.  Located on the east side of Indiana 9 and 67, this family burial ground is now in the middle of the Irving Materials Inc. stone quarry.  Among the huge piles of rock, sand and dirt is a small bouquet of trees marking the presence of the graveyard and reminding the heavy equipment and loaded dump trucks swirling around that people "rest" here.

The Seybert family is listed in Samuel Harden's The Pioneer as early farming settlers to Fall Creek Township.  Nicholas Seybert was born in Virginia in 1801 and Hillinah was his wife.  The couple had four children.  After coming to the Fall Creek area around 1823, Nicholas became a county commissioner and died at 64 years of age in 1864.  Also in the same small family graveyard are Nicholas' parents James, who died in 1842 at 61 and Ruth, who died in 1849 at 73 years-old.

Two of James' brothers, Henry and George and their families also migrated to the area.  These Madison County pioneers descended from the Seibert family who immigrated in 1738 to Berks County, Pennsylvania, from the Saarland area of Germany.  Ancestor Jacob changed the last name from Seibert to Seybert.  Relative Jacob was a captain in the French and Indian wars in the mid-1750s.  Nicholas' grandfather, Henry, moved the family to Virginia where Nicholas and most of his siblings were born.  The Seybert family, like most Hoosier pioneers, were strong minded people who came to set up a new home and help turn the wilderness into a community.

And like most pioneer family graveyards, the Seybert cemetery was started on high ground in what was then a reclusive area of the property.  By custom and necessity, they often included the lost loved ones of neighboring farming settlers, thus explaining the two Browns and William Weir who also have stones here.  As with any pioneer cemetery, historians must also consider that there may be graves at this location that have lost stones or which were never designated with a marker.  Therefore, the burial list obtained by the cemetery commission may only be partial.

The Seybert family owned the graveyard and surrounding property until 1875.  It was sold or inherited through successive private ownership until 1992 when the land was purchased by Irving Materials, Inc.  At this point the Madison County Cemetery Commission's secretary Georgia Lyons, researched the family's genealogy and the land's history.  State laws had been in place since 1973 protecting pioneer cemeteries from destruction and/or desecration by private citizens or businesses.

IMI has proven to be an excellent guardian for the Seybert family's burial ground.  If the stones were defaced by anything other than time and weather, young vandals, before IMI's purchase of the property, are the most likely culprits.  In October 2008, an IMI spokesperson said that the company was executing it "good neighbor policy" when he informed township trustee Mike Hart that the company would be paying for and installing a new white vinyl fence around the cemetery with decorative gates.  Hart and MCCC were extremely pleased and very appreciative to IMI for its efforts and showing how the past can co-exist with and even beautify our busy modern world.

If you wish to visit the Seybert Cemetery, to be safe, ask permission at the IMI office inside the entrance gate.

By  Melody Hull, Secretary of the Madison County Cemetery Commission

 West 8th Street