Black - inf of David - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

The three oldest marked graves in western Ripley Township and their location are as follows: Stonebraker Cemetery, infant daughter of David and Elizabeth Black, died March 26, 1828. J. N. Titus Cemetery, Covington Bevius, died Nov. 15, 1832. McCormick Cemetery, William S. Smith, died Sept. 15, 1834. The Stonebraker Cemetery is noted not only as being one of the earliest burying grounds in the county, but as containing the remains of the county’s oldest citizen, George Fruits, who died at the ripe age of 114 years. As one wanders mid the turfy mounds and gazes upon those stone slabs leaning with storms and over grown with the moss of three quarters of a century, plain and simple as the lives they memorize, how vividly recur the lines of Gray’s deathless elegy:

“Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-trees shade,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”