IU graduate one of few left to be buried at Dunn Cemetery

Though Dunn Cemetery existed six years before IU's first buildings, its history is narrower than the plot of land where it lies. While the cemetery is located within campus grounds, IU does not own it, nor do many people know much about it.\nSituated on the east side of the Indiana Memorial Union, students pass the cemetery on a daily basis. Except for the occasional tale told close to Halloween, the cemetery rarely becomes the subject of conversation. \nLast week, however, several students noticed some workers digging on the cemetery grounds. While the sight might have sparked the curiosity of several passersby, this was not an out-of-season Halloween story. \nOn the afternoon of Feb. 10, Marilyn Seward Warden was buried during a private service held at the Dunn Cemetery. Warden, a descendent of one of Bloomington's founding families, attended IU as both an undergraduate and a graduate student. Her four children are also all IU graduates. Throughout her life, she has served many of Bloomington's community organizations, including the IU Foundation and Psi Iota Xi. \nSince IU does not own the cemetery, it was not involved in the burial. In fact, Dave Hurst, director of grounds services at IU, said the University is not responsible for any of the cemetery's upkeep. \n"All we do is keep it clean of leaves and trash," Hurst said.\nHurst has worked for IU's ground services for 12 years. Since he has been at IU, there have been only three burials. Everything he knows about the cemetery he learned from a couple of people who are now buried there before they passed away. \nHe said information about the cemetery gets harder and harder to find as the descendants who are eligible to be buried in it pass away. The extent of his knowledge to date about the cemetery is collected in a thin file he keeps in his office. Along with some handwritten notes, the file contains a couple of newspaper clippings, some drawings of the cemetery plot, a few obituaries and a copy of the deed.\nAccording to the deed to the cemetery, George G. Dunn has granted these private burial grounds to descendants of Eleanor Dunn, Nancy Alexander and Jane Irwin. The cemetery is also reserved for anyone with whom the descendants intermarry. In the deed, Dunn grants never-ending access to these private burial grounds.\nWhen the University bought parts of the Dunn family's farmland, it was required to build around the cemetery.\nThe oldest grave still stands, belonging to 17-year-old Jennet Steward, who was buried in 1814 -- two years before Indiana became a state. Yet despite the cemetery's old age, a centralized collection of information about it does not exist. Most of what is known about the cemetery is a combination of legends and facts. \nLinda Degh, distinguished professor emeritus with the Department of Folklore, said some students have seen footprints around the graves or watched as the inscriptions on the graves light up in the dark. She said she is unaware of any detailed stories about this cemetery.\n"Legends are being created all the time," Degh said. "People make legends about things they do not know about. It's soothing." \nAs the information gets passed from generation to generation, the cemetery's past gets harder to find. But Degh is confident legends will be created to fill in the missing pieces.\n-- Contact staff writer Vanessa Caruso at vcaruso@indiana.edu.