On September 9, 2011, two young ambitious women set out on an adventure in hopes to finally find the gravesite of their 4th great grandfather, Hardy Sparks. Kelly Hancock Paugh and Rhonda Sparks Beeker are cousins that had been searching for this gravesite for at least a decade. They had been driving around that portion of Greene county, Indiana looking all around using some notes from their family history. This history was very vague and by using different forms of literature found and information from the locals, this time we felt that we might be successful.

We parked our vehicle off of Breeden Rd and began our walk, we both carried a backpack and in tehm we had stowed; paper and pen, 2 GPS's camera, scrub brush, gloves and of course a John Deere knife. I would guess that we probably walked a total of a mile. That distance does not seem that far, however; it was not an eary walk. We went thru 3 soybean fields, crossed 2 creeks, and waded thru several grubby fence rows. At one point we though that we might have found it, but then realized we had not. We had found a clearing but not Hardy's tombstone. So we went to the west about another 300 yds, crossed into an opening in the trees and then to the north up a hill. That is when we spotted what looked like 2 tombstones leaning against a big tree.

As we got closer, we could tell that someone had cleared out the area and had definitely propped those 2 stones against the tree. Once we got to the big Sycamore tree holding up those 2 stones, it was very plaint to see that this area was much bigger than we had expected. Someone had spent a lot of time there and had been marking the different gravesites. The owner of this property had told me that the Indiana Department of Transportation had been looking back there as they had been planning the expansion of I-69 from Evansville to Indianapolis, so it all made sense to us. He also said that they had used sonar detectors to find where the graves were.

Rhonda and I had expected to find one or maybe 2 graves here, so we were very surprised to see all the activity that had happened there. We found that someone had used pink marking tape and tied it to weeds, limbs, trees and even some rocks to mark a spot. Our belief is that these numbers were marking where their sonar had detected that there was a grave below. These spots were numbered. We did find a marking with #2 and the highest number that we found was #24. We were not able to account for all of the numbers from 1-24, however; I am sure that some pieces of numbered tape could have come off and blown away. Beside the 2 large stones, there was a small rectangular stone still connected in the ground beside the large Scyamore. We believe that small stone could have been a child's stone. but there did not appear to have had any inscription on it.

I begun making a map of the cemetery as Rhonda took pictures of our findings. I stepped off the cemetery from east to west direction and came up wiht 20 paces, which would be abt 60 ft. Other than the marked graves, there were 2 stakes marking the corners and 1 tree with a ribbon tied around it. As I tried to imagine the other 2 boundary lines, I noticed that there were 2 graves marked outside of that square. I show this to Rhonda and she agreed. We are unsure as to why this was.

After we had all of the documentation that we felt we needed, we got an exact coordinate reading for the site from our GPS. It was N 39.05841 W 086.6829 with an elevation of 770 ft. We packed up our things and headed back. On the walk back, I left markings along the trail in hopes that the next time we could find Hardy's cemetery much easier. All the way home we could hardly believe that we had finally done it. Something our ancestors could not do. But wait our work was not done. What we needed now is to make sure that this cemetery would be kept safe as the Indiana DNR had no record of it existing.

I worked with Jeannie Regan-Dinuis of the Department of Natural Resources adn was able to get this cemetery on the "Registry of Indiana Historic Cemeteries". The registry number is CR-28-162 and can be found in Greene county, Center township, Section 12 7N3W. The DNR even named it "The Hardy Sparks Cemetery". Now Hardy Sparks and his 2nd wife Martha Motley Sparks gravesites, and the other 22 people that are buried there, are recorded in history and shall remain safe as a "Historic Pioneer Cemetery". All of this thanks to 2 young ambitious women. Well, maybe not so young, just ambitious.

Submitted by:
Kelly Hancock Paugh
10752 South 50 West
Pendleton, Ind 46064
765-778-2629