What is left of Hale-McBride Family Cemetery is located on what was the site of Isaac Hale's farm on what is now known as Blackiston Mill Road in Clarksville, near the intersection with Gutford Road.  Isaac Hale was directly related to the family of David McBride, whose family cemetery is nearby.  The rest of the cemetery has been obliterated with blacktop and made part of the parking lot for a strip shopping center.

Hale-McBride Cemetery, on the edge of a strip shopping center's parking lot.  With TWO drive-up phone booths for your convenience.	Utility pole guide wires anchored in what remains of the cemetery.  Cars parked on what used to be part of Hale-McBride Cemetery.
3/4ths of Hale-McBride Cemetery has VANISHED beneath the parking lot blacktop.  All that remains of the 80 to 100 graves are 10 stones.  The surviving site is about 1/3th of the area "reserved" in the 1882 Partition Order which disbursed the estate of Isaac Hale, Sr., who died in 1881 or 1882.
Hale-McBride Cemetery, circa 1923

Some of the descendants of people buried at Hale-McBride Cemetery and supporters of the Clark County Cemetery Preservation Committee met there on July 25, 1998.  Joining us was Jim Grayson, owner of Grayson Funeral Home in Charlestown and New Washington, and his son Paul.  Jim's family owned property in the area when he was growing up and he spent a good deal of time there.  (Members of Jim's family are buried in Grayson-Long Cemetery in the woods across the road.)

Jim substantiated Donny Loweth's uncle's report that, years ago, this cemetery was three or four times larger than it appears today.  Jim advised us that, over the years, the shopping center parking lot has slowly crept over more and more of the cemetery.

The grave of Donny Loweth's great-grandfather, who died circa 1935, is apparently among those underneath the blacktop as we cannot find his grave and no stone remains bearing his name.

Fallen monument of Isaac Hale	Fallen stone of Rebecca Hale (first wife of Isaac Hale)

The cemetery is located on the East side of Blackiston Mill Road, between the General Baptist Church and the convenience market at 1894 Blackiston Mill Road.

Although the Hale family cemetery here is quite conspicuous where it sits on the very edge of a busy thoroughfare, it is nonetheless in rather bad condition. As we find more and more often nowadays, most of the stones are broken, though two were intact.

Donny Loweth of Jeffersonville is a descendant of this family.  He and his wife Carol are trying to clean up this cemetery. In the course of their work on the cemetery, the Loweths have learned that up to 3/4ths of the site is under the blacktopped parking lot.

We were all disturbed by its blighted condition, not to mention the callousness of the former property owner for destroying the cemetery and the utility company in planting telephone booths on the border of the cemetery, planting telephone poles on the cemetery grounds and running utility lines beneath the ground through the cemetery.

The Jeffersonville Township Trustee was willing to help us clean up Hale-McBride Cemetery until he found out that the owner of the shopping center has been paying taxes of the sites for many years.  According to Indiana Code IC 23-14-68-1, Trustees have no statutory responsibility for maintaining cemeteries "located on land on which property taxes are assessed and paid under IC 6-1.1-4."  [This exception language was added by our State Legislators in a previous session and has resulted in the desecration of numerous pioneer cemeteries across Indiana simply because the Trustees are no longer allowed to tend cemeteries on private property which is taxed.]

At left is the beautiful -- more or less intact -- stone of ZARILDA TAYLOR (1852-1876). Notice the exquisite detail.

Notice also in the photo at left the telephone guide wire sunk down into the ground a few feet from a surviving grave. Just to the left of this stone (about 15 feet away) are two TELEPHONE BOOTHS. In the background behind this stone you can see the paved parking lot for the shopping center.

The pavement surrounds the cemetery on two sides. The third side is bounded by a drainage ditch/small stream and the fourth boundary is the heavily traveled Blackiston Mill Road. (See the 1882 Partition Order "reserving" the cemetery and a drawing of what remains of Hale-McBride Cemetery.)

The index below indicates the earliest burial was in the 1840s and the most recent was in 1935. We have been advised that there were 80 to 100 graves here some years ago.

Donny and Carol Loweth do not have e-mail or Internet access.  If you wish to contact them, please write me at LoisMauk@usa.net.

Some index records were copied by B. C. Holmes; some were copied by a committee of ladies from the McCullouch Home Economics Club in Jeffersonville Township. Miss Amanda L. Bottorff was a Clark County committee woman. The date of these transcriptions is unknown, but was probably circa 1970.

.             .                         .               .

COBB          Francis Marion            b. ????         d. 184?

HALE          Cordelia Florence Hale    b. 11/7/1854    d. 1/18/1920

              {per Florence Salyards'

              book on the descendants

              of Robert Stewart, she

              is buried here; no stone

              in 1998; Mrs. Salyards

              is deceased}

HALE          Isaac (age 70 yrs.,

              8 mos., 27 days)          b. 1811         d. 04/02/1882



HALE          Rebecca (wife of

              Isaac, possible date

              of death)                 b. 01/21/1817   d. 02/27/1881



HALE          Sallie (wife of

              Thomas; mother of

              Isaac; possible year

              of death, 1869)           b. 07/29/1787   d. 12/25/1863



HALE          Samuel Wright             b. 09/16/1847   d. 05/18/1917



McCURDY       Cordelia                  b. 11/07/1855   d. 01/18/1920



McCURDY       James                     b. 02/12/1852   d. 09/26/1918



McCURDY       Maude R.                  b. 01/09/1881   d. 09/01/1917



McCURDY       Walter                    b. 10/30/1870   d. 11/27/1919



TAYLOR        Everett C.                b. 09/12/1897   d. 10/09/1935

TAYLOR        John Edward {per Frances

              Salyards, he is buried

              here; no stone in 1998}   b. 11/1847      d. 7/1930



TAYLOR        Mary                      b. 08/25/1880   d. 08/05/1881



TAYLOR        Walter G.                 b. 05/11/1886   d. 03/17/1919



TAYLOR        Zarilda {Zerelda Ellen

              Hall, b. 1/30/1852,

              d. 4/13/1878, per

              historian Frances

              Salyards}                 b. 01/30/1852   d. 04/18/1876

HALE, Isaac, age 50, born in NY; wife, Rebecca, 45; children: Sarah, 18, Martha, 16, Rebecca, 15, Samuel, 13, Isaac, 11, Zerilda, 7, Florence, 6, John, 3, Penelope, 1; also in household: John HALL, age 20, born in OH and Sallie HALE, age 72, born in NH.

McBRIDE, Charles R., age 31; wife, Maria, 25; child: Arabella, 6

McBRIDE, David, age 64, born in PA; wife, Mary, age 66, born in KY; child: D. Wesley, 26; also in houshold, Mary ALEXANDER, age 21

McBRIDE, Jonathan, age 34; wife, Laura, 30; children, Jonathan W., 6, David, 4, Isaac, 2 and Douglas, 3 months; also in household: Simon BIDGE, age 23, born in PA

HALE, Andrew        married GRADY, Elizabeth     11 Apr 1850

HALE, Cilly Ann     married MILHOLLAND, Charles  09 Dec 1834

HALE, Elizabeth     married McKINLEY, Johnson    23 Mar 1845

HALE, Isaac         married STEWART, Rebecca     27 Jul 1841

HALE, Michael       married McKINLEY, Gemima     15 Feb 1838

HALE, Milton        married BROWN, Susannah      13 Jan 1842

HALE, Sarah         married BARNETT, John        29 Nov 1838



McBRIDE, David      married ROSS, Mary           18 Dec 1817

McBRIDE, Margarette married JOHNSON, James       14 Nov 1847



McCURDY, John       married TOLSTON, Sarah       18 Feb 1850

McCURDY, Mary       married SHELLER, John G.     10 Jul 1845

McCURDY, William    married SHAW, Sarah Jane     08 Sep 1840

I have no further information on this cemetery. This index was obtained from the Jeffersonville Township Public Library, 211 East Court Avenue, Jeffersonville, Indiana 47130, telephone: (812) 285-5635.