Local group discovers, restores grave of Revolutionary War vet

For the past 186 years, the weathered gray stone has stood silently in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

When Jeremiah Harrell was buried in 1834, his gravesite was one of the first in the area. The Revolutionary War veteran had moved to Johnson County from South Carolina, when he and his family were some of the region’s earliest settlers.

The graves of Revolutionary War veterans are rare in Johnson County. So when the local branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution located the burial site in the Center Grove area, it was a cause for celebration.

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“We were all so excited to see it. We all hung around it and took pictures,” said Vicki Kurtz, regent of the Mary Bryan Chapter of the DAR, based in Greenwood.

What started as a community service project to identify the graves of veterans in a Center Grove area cemetery turned into an opportunity to honor a Revolutionary War veteran. The DAR came across the gravestone of Harrell, who had fought for the U.S. against the British in a number of battles in South Carolina.

The organization has arranged for a special ironwork adornment to go around Harrell’s grave, and will host a ceremony unveiling the refurbished gravesite in September.

The National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution is a nonprofit, non-political volunteer women’s service organization. The group aims to promote patriotism, preserve American history and educate the community.

Locally, the Mary Bryan Chapter of the DAR was founded in Greenwood in 1979. The chapter is named after Mary Hunt Bryan, whose father was a company commander in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War. Her husband, Samuel Bryan, also fought in the Revolutionary War. They moved to Indiana in 1830, living on a plot of land near what is now Southport.

Bryan and her husband are buried in Pioneer Cemetery on Southport Road.

DAR hosts monthly meetings, takes part in state and national activities and does volunteer work throughout the Johnson County community. One of their activities they had hoped to do this year was partnering with Greenwood VFW Post 5864 to lay flags on all veteran grave sites at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend, though that activity will be postponed until later this year.

“Last year on Memorial Day, two of our members went up to Anderson Cemetery in Indianapolis, and helped lay flags on their veteran gravesites up there,” Kurtz said. “When I became regent of our chapter, I thought that was something we needed to do in Greenwood.”

Organizers looked for a smaller cemetery to start working on, and contacted those in charge of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, located off of Morgantown Road. They explained what they wanted to do, laying flags on veterans’ graves.

The cemetery sexton had never had anyone do that, and said they’d have to walk the cemetery to locate every veteran’s grave. Kurtz offered to have their members assist in doing that as part of a volunteer project.

Over the course of four days in October, members gathered to walk the cemetery and identify the veteran gravesites in preparation for the flag-laying event. They were able to locate 407 veterans buried in the cemetery.

It was on the fourth day of their project that they discovered Harrell’s headstone.

“The last two sections we did were the very oldest ones. One of the sections we happened to look at was the one that had the Revolutionary War veteran’s grave in it,” Kurtz said.

Harrell was born in South Carolina in 1756. He joined the revolution in spring of 1776, serving as a private for three years under Lt. Alexander Harrington in the South Carolina Regiment. He was involved in the battles of Sullivan’s Island and Briar Creek, as well as with the militia at King’s Mountain.

“Family tradition says that he was one of three that escaped being killed out of the entire company, because he was very strong and very fast,” Kurtz said.

After he was discharged from the army, he married Sarah Osborne in 1781, and they had eight children. Eventually, they moved to Indiana and settled in Johnson County. He died on May 6, 1834 and was buried at Mount Pleasant.

The headstone lists his last name as Harrold, but that is believed to be an error in the transcription of his pension papers filed in Marion County in 1832, Kurtz discovered after researching the soldier.

To further recognize Harrell’s grave, the Mary Bryan Chapter proposed creating a wrap-around iron structure to adorn the stone. The ironwork will have a medallion identifying Harrell as a Revolutionary War veteran, and a plaque on the back recognizing those who have donated their services to have it done.

The medallion will hold an 18-inch flag, and a wreath can be hung from it.

“It wasn’t as elaborate as some of the other iron pieces in the cemetery, because his headstone didn’t call for something elaborate. It’s a simple headstone,” Kurtz said.

Kurtz was able to enlist local artisans and businesses to donate work such as renderings of a the iron structure, someone to fabricate the piece and another to powdercoat it. They took their plans to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Board, and they were approved.

The piece is being completed currently. Plans were in place to lay flags and have a public ceremony on the weekend before Memorial Day, but the coronavirus crisis has forced the DAR and VFW to postpone the event, rescheduling it for the weekend before Labor Day, Kurtz said.