Anderson Township

Location: east of south Main Street on the north side of 34th Street in Meadowbrook.

    Many cemeteries started as the Harmeson did: on an accessible, yet out-of-the-way hill at the back of the family farm.  Especially before the age of embalming--that is before the Civil War--family members had to relinquish to the earth, rather quickly by today's standards, the remains of loved ones who had "passed on."   So, for most of history actually, people who worked the land were buried in the earth they nurtured and depended on for survival. Little did the Harmeson family realize that what for them was an isolated knoll in the back cow pasture would in the 20th century be a neighborhood for many houses and families:  Meadowbrook housing addition within the city limits of Anderson.  The 1876 plat map for Anderson Township does not show this cemetery; however, another map, published in the same year, "Anderson and Vicinity," which shows the town in greater detail, does record the Harmeson Cemetery's existence.

    John Harmeson, who is the first listed on the stone tablet above, came to Madison County in 1836.  His wife, whom he married in 1823 in Belmont County, Ohio, was Parlia Minor. She is the second name listed. Their four oldest children were born in Ohio before they migrated west.  John and his family settled on eighty acres, then two miles south of Anderson.  There, the couple had their four youngest children.  The names of John and Parlia's sons and daughters are David, William, Clark, Emily, Thomas, Allen, Mirror/Meredith, and John.  As historian Samuel Harden related in 1895:

"By strict economy and industry they succeeded in making a grand farm...  Mr. Harmeson died September 5, 1877.  She [Parlia] died June 19, 1869.  He was seventy-four years, eleven months and six day old.  She was sixty-five years, three months and eighteen days old.  Both [are] buried on the old farm." 

Eventually the family burial ground would contain approximately twenty Harmeson relatives and neighboring friends.

    In the late 20th century, the MCCC marked the original family burial ground-- now surrounded by the mid-century housing development--fenced and gated the cemetery, and erected the stone tablet, pictured above, to acknowledge the earth made sacred by the Harmesons.  The known burials of the Harmeson family were recorded on the stone memorial:

John Sr., 1803-1877

Parlia Minor, 1804-1869, wife of John Sr.

Greta Ann, 1803-1869, wife of John D.

David, 1821-1869

Mary T. Seward, 1804-1871, wife of David

Emily H. Stanley, wife of Meredith