Terri Fyffe turned her car off the highway and felt the crunch of gravel under her tires in southern Montgomery County, where a creek sliced through a cornfield in the distance.
Somewhere beyond those acres of farmland, Revolutionary War soldier Robert Pottinger had been laid to rest in his family’s cemetery, which until now had eluded most genealogists documenting the county’s military veterans.
Guided by an old map, Fyffe and her fellow researchers Susan Fisher and Rachel Brown took another gravel road past a farmhouse, where the residents pointed toward a lane to the creek. To reach Old Pottinger’s Cemetery, the women had to ford the creek and hike about half a mile across the field.
“We found that cemetery. It was an adventure,” Fyffe later recalled with a laugh, adding that the graveyard was too overgrown to find Pottinger’s exact tombstone. “Some of the stones are broken.”
The self-described “intrepid trio” of researchers from Dorothy Q. Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution are working on a project to map the burial sites of local Revolutionary War soldiers and place wreaths on the graves.
The group recently decorated the Montgomery County graves of 15 soldiers and two “real daughters,” or DAR members whose fathers fought for the nation’s independence. They also placed pennies on the soldiers’ gravestones in a traditional sign of respect.
“Especially in this year, we thought it would be nice to honor men and women, unfortunately we don’t have any women soldiers, who served the American cause in the revolution,” Fyffe said.
Fyffe researched burial records of the soldiers listed on plaques displayed at the Dorothy Q. Chapter House and the group traveled to more than a dozen cemeteries to search for the graves. They found tombstones for all but four of the soldiers.
Maps and photos of each grave are being compiled into a booklet for the Crawfordsville District Public Library to aid researchers.
The group plans to lay the wreaths every year after Thanksgiving. They are still searching for the graves of James Miller and Robert Gott, who is believed to have been buried at Wasson Cemetery.