Cunot - Putnam

From Putnam County Founding Fathers FB Page 3-5-2025 via Jordan Vaughn

In the late 1940’s, plans were set to make way for the construction of the Cagles Mill Dam, creating Cataract Lake. Three family cemeteries were exhumed, a total of 70 human remains, and were transported to the northwest corner of Cunot Cemetery.

The Reeves Cemetery (Putnam County, Cloverdale Township) was originally located around a few hundred yards north of the Cataract public beach. 16 recorded graves were removed. This cemetery was mostly family of Andrew J. Reeves, an original Putnam County patent owner, arriving in 1836.

With the other two cemeteries, I have yet to discover the original locations. John Bowman (1898-1972), who owned a tract of Putnam County land south of the Lieber State aquatic center, also had land in Owen County that had graves removed. I’d assume this cemetery was where the lake is today south of the aquatic center just south of the Putnam/Owen line.

The third cemetery is reported to have been in Washington Township in Putnam County. With that, It’s quite obvious that a majority of headstones never made it to Cunot. As you can see in the photo, the sunken-in plots are unmarked.

If anyone has more information or insight on this topic, please let us know! I, myself, have several ancestors (Nees/Neese, Christenberry, Craft, Crouse, Bowman) with unknown burial locations that may have been misplaced and unmarked.

Newspaper article in regards to Cagle Dam from ? newspaper but it doesn’t seem to be all here

70 bodies, all buried more than 50 years ago are to be exhumed from private family cemeteries on the site of the $6,000,000 Cagles Mill Dam project.  Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell Thursday ordered transfer of the bodies to Cunot Cemetery in Owen County on request of Army engineers.  Graves in the three plots date from 1846-1900. Two cemeteries are in the southwest corner of Putnam County and the third just over the line in Owen County.  The old burial grounds are on farms of John Ralph Fish, James Reeves Heins and John Bowman all lying within the 1400 acres reservoir site.