Notes for Aaron Sylvester Overstreet:
From: The (Indianapolis) Star, June 27, 1943

Eighty-Year-Old Hoosier Works and Hopes for an Early Peace

Eighty, going on 81, Aaron Overstreet of Lizton, busy digging ditches, sawing and splitting wood, serving as sexton of the K. of P. Cemetery, looking after a garden, being a good neighbor, attending church and Sunday school, helping Mrs. Overstreet with the family laundry, just living a full and useful life despite his four-score years, doing his best to help win this war -- the fourth within his memory.

He was all unmindful of his 80th birthday recently until someone protested at his digging a ditch upon such an occasion. He said: "I like to ditch. And besides, I can't get no one to do it and it has to be done", was his retort as he continued to throw up the spades of dirt from a trench about as deep as he was tall. And he wasn't going to be bothered talking for newspapers either, for the ditch had to be finished, other work was waiting. So Mr. Overstreet talked as he ditched until he realized the work was not progressing so well, when he sent this "interviewer" into the house to talk to his wife for any further information desired.

Old Maple Tree
This led to the tale of the old tree, some thought was as old as Lizton. Remembered and adored was the old maple tree that stood in front of the general store that was owned and operated by Sol Ellis for half a century, Mr. Ellis retiring a few years ago. Not long ago the tree blew down. There it lay, blockading the pathway to the store until Mr. Overstreet volunteered to clear the path. Now the Overstreet's have a nice supply of fuel for next winter that has cost neither money nor transportation, nor any labor from defense or war work.

"Trustees have been elected, put out of office; wars have been fought and won all over again; tales have been told and retold, growing taller and taller as the years went on; village folklore has been kept alive under that old maple tree" Mrs. Overstreet asserts with a fine sense of humor which she has retained all her life.

Loafers Paradise
"And as for the tobacco that has been chewed and smoked, the ground around that old maple tree has likely soaked up more tobacco juice than any other one spot in the the world", she declares. A gathering spot for loafers all the years. Maybe it was the lack of those that keeled the old tree over.

A postwar memory of the 70's is recalled by Mr. Overstreet, who is a native of Lizton. The town was visited and practically decimated by the cholera. Tradition has it that it was brought to the village by a bride who was stricken and died within a few days following her arrival.

Mr. Overstreet, who was living with his grandparents in Indianapolis, "got wind" that things weren't going well in his hometown, so "unbeknownst" he hopped a train and went to Lizton to investigate. He has never forgotten the horrors. A family of boys with whom he had been closely associated were all near death. Other families were completely wiped out. Death was lurking near every home it seemed.

Stories of Heroism
Many stories of heroism and fortitude are told of those terrible days. Cholera was almost always fatal. None, regardless of how much they longed to help those in distress, dared come near. So mothers sometimes "laid out" their own loved children for burial; others,both men and women, acted as nurses only to die later. In one instance, a man who had gone from house to house crawled away to a straw stack to die alone and uncared for.

The little graveyard that borders on State Highway 34 (Note: The Vieley Cemetery east of Lizton just south of US 136) bears the legend "Here Lie the Union Township Pioneers". Many of the marble slabs reveal the tragedy of those dark days in the 70's following the Civil War.

The Four Horsemen rode then, as now, in the "wake of war". Not unfamiliar figures, those horsemen, to those of fourscore years. They work, these elderly ones now, to win this war, hoping it will be a war that will end all wars; they pray for an enduring peace. "The fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much".

from the Republican for Jan. 9, 1947:

Aaron Sylvester Overstreet, age 83, died at his home in Lizton, December 31, after a long illness. Funeral services were Friday morning at the Lizton Methodist church with burial in the K. of P. cemetery. Revs. R. Richmond Blake and Paul Klausmeier were in charge of the service. Mr. Overstreet was born March 17, 1863 in Lizton, and spent practically all his life in Hendricks county. March 4, 1888 he married Miss Martha Caroline Walter. To this union was born five children, W. E. Overstreet of Marshall, Bertha Blessing of Pittsboro, Horace Oversteet of Indianapolis, Lois Davis of Greencastle and Helen Shumaker of Almeda, California. He was a faithful and active member of the Methodist church and a devoted husband and father. Other survivors are two brothers, Lee of Rochester and Oliver of Lizton; also twenty-one grandchildren and fourteen great grandchildren. Pall bearers were Clarence, Ray, Vaughn and Vernon Overstreet and Paul and Charles Blessing.