Unionville Cemeteries

Unionville is located in Benton Township in Monroe County Indiana (391348N 0862458W) and is home to two cemeteries: Unionville Community Cemetery (in 2 parts around Union Church) and Little Union Cemetery across the road.  Both cemeteries are well maintained. Several other small cemeteries are nearby including the Abraham Young Cemetery, Young-Peterson, Brock Cemetery, Hacker Cemetery, Bridge Church and Chitwood Cemetery.

Unionville Community Cemetery is located East and West of Unionville Baptist Church with the older graves on the west side.  Two aspects are quite noticeable in touring this cemetery:

• Names included reads like a history book for the county and especially Benton Township —Young, Chitwood, Richardson, Cox, Neal.
• The tombstones themselves illustrate the variety of stone used throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with excellent examples of sandstone, limestone, concrete, granite, and of course marble.  There are several treestump stones with excellent illustrations of the symbolism used during the early 1900s. 

Little Union Cemetery history begins with the establishment of the Little Union Baptist Church. Joseph Young’s book, An Autobiography of a Village, a history of Unionville, Indiana, tells about the establishment of the Little Union Baptist Church, “Sometime in the late 1820’s a Baptist class was organized down on Brummett Creek.” In 1835, Hugh and Nancy McClung donated land and building to the congregation, “the tract of land was situated just south of the Bloomington road, and their fist meetinghouse stood in the center of what is now Brummett Creek Road.”  “In 1849 the Little Union Church trustees were deeded additional property for building and graveyard purposes, and on the new site they constructed a 36 by 36 foot brick building.”

An impressive memorial to the veterans is on the west side of the bell tower which stands just east of the Church. 

Read more about it: Young, Jospeh Helon. An Autobiography of a Village, a history of Unionville, Indiana,
West Rutland, Vermont: Daamen Printing Co. Inc. 1998.  [Available at MCHC Genealogy Library, Indiana University Wells Library and the MC Public Library]. 

County cemeteries of Monroe : completely revised-augmented Death index c1830-1998, parts I-III / original data base-Rachel Rice with 1998 addenda by David Foster ; compiled & assembled-Marcella Deckard & Claude F. Rice in 1993, David Foster & Julian Livingston in 1998. Bloomington, IN: MCHS. 2000.

For more information about each Unionville Cemetery, consult the Cemetery Files at the Genealogy Library at the Monroe County History Center or contact the Cemetery Committee at genealogy@monroehistory.org. 

See previous Cemeteries of the Month