---

Sometimes I forget. Recently, for example, I offered to take Julie out to breakfast. She had asked what I wanted her to fix, but I thought she deserved to relax a little. Pretty smooth, huh? Well, the morning had great potential until the waitress brought the check. My wallet was at home.

Forgetting is not intentional. If it were, I’d sleep better some nights. Maybe it’s age, but thankfully that’s not a big concern yet. More likely it’s about too few hours and too much information. We all live in the chaos of time and data and details. Somedays just interrupt our rememberin’ duties.

Will Rogers once said, “Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.” That rings of truth, but I want to know more and to recall more about so much, especially about history and loved ones. Dates aren’t as important as the stories of people and what they faced and accomplished. Like my friend Candy Carr, I’m a sponge for yesterday and today. Whoever I meet has a chapter to offer. So do the individuals whose graves I pass. But, just as I did my wallet, I occasionally forget bits and pieces of the past and present.

Now I am not a cemetery sleuth, but I am a guest who makes himself feel welcome. In particular, I visit the Sandcreek Friends Cemetery near Azalia. Flowers and candles and solar lights are placed at family memorials. If I park the truck close enough, Janis Joplin sings for them as I share news and memories.

Over the years I have had time to acquaint and reacquaint myself with that neighborhood. Reading gravestones and using the newspaper articles and anecdotes posted on Find a Grave help. Sometimes I venture into Newpapers.com. Let me give you a brief tour of the Sandcreek Friends Cemetery.

The older graves house Quakers who came from North Carolina (Wayne County, Pasquotank County, Perquimans County and Guilford County.). The need for a new start and a belief in civil disobedience, resistance without violence, led them to Indiana when they disagreed with the laws of their prior states regarding slavery.

John Thomas (1820-1913) embodied the concept of resistance without violence. The January 16, 1913, Indianapolis Star stated that his Railway Station may have assisted 200 runaway slaves. As an underground railroad conductor, he hid, fed, and pointed them North.

Not every gravesite at the Sandcreek Friends Cemetery has a marker. This was especially true early on. Many Quakers did not believe that gravestones were necessary. Vanity? Wastefulness? 

James Parisho (1728 - 1839) had the following posted on Find a Grave:

“There was a time when markers were deliberately shunned by the Friends movement, so there are not many markers in the cemetery during this time period.”

James may have thought that his 111 years said more than any stone could capture.

Examples of allegiance and service and conflict are honored with flags each year. Thomas Cook (1756 - 1844) served in the Revolutionary War in Cook’s Co 9 NC Regiment. Ulysses Grant Black (1867 - 1940) was born right after his father, Abner Black, died of wounds he received during an escape from a Confederate prison. Other veterans from the Civil War, WWII, and Korea rest with them.

The deceased at Sandcreek certainly faced tragedies, maladies, and social difficulties. Willis Ward (1872 - 1907) died of smallpox in the poor asylum. The news article accompanying his name said his death “created considerable of a scare in Sandcreek township. A number of persons were afflicted with an eruptive disease, which it is now thought was smallpox.” Diphtheria, milk sickness, an accidental shooting, typho-malaria fever, and mental health issues are mentioned for some buried here. These people were as vulnerable as we are.

Hopefully, people will always find a moment to laugh. As a retired teacher, I smiled when I read about Pennington Fodrea (1836 - Unknown) who died in 1891 or before according to family profiles. He taught one season at the Anderson school in Sandcreek Township. An anecdote in the 1915 paper says that “one afternoon, all the boys and many of the girls went off rabbit hunting and did not return to school that day. Fodrea was so incensed, he resigned the position.”

Some names always catch my attention: Absillet, Exum, Hulda(h), Peninah, and Zimeriah. Six first names on the headstones began with a Z: Zelia and five Zilpha’s. That trend ended a hundred years ago. Twenty-three Williams, 20 Marys, 19 Sarahs, 14 Thomases, 13 Johns, nine Isaacs and four Joel Newsoms are here.

Joel Newsom’s (1832 - 1909) dedication and persistence set the bar pretty high in Azalia. He was “the oldest postmaster in service to Bartholomew County, having had charge there since 1859” until his death in 1909.

Like others, Joseph Newsom (1828 - 1879) possessed the courage to try to make the world a better place. He spent eight years as a missionary among the Indians in Kansas and the Indian Territory. Starting in 1871, he suffered through heat and cold and all kinds of deprivation to be with the people he devoted the best years of his life to. He left the work he loved and people who loved him because of health. A May 15, 2022, article on THE OKLAHOMAN website, by Jana Hayes, gives him recent accolades. It was entitled “You probably didn’t know about this Quaker church established by missionaries in the 1870’s.”

Some of my elementary teachers and mentors are buried there, too. They taught science and health, manners, and work ethics. They’d be happy to know that I picked up on a little history and some of the life lessons. They’d be even more excited that I learned to love the fellowship of the present. I’m definitely a sponge for the past, but the friends and family in my daily life are what I get up for each day. I don’t want to “let yesterday use up too much of today.” Right, Will?