On Sunday afternoon, October 30, in observance of National WABASH Day, a group of Parke County residents met at the Tilghman Howard family grave site in the Old Rockville Cemetery to level three large ten foot tall limestone monuments, which were leaning precariously. With help from two large steel pry bars for lifting, eight five gallon buckets of gravel were crammed beneath the three monuments, thereby leveling them.
Historians have called Tilghman Howard Parke County's most famous citizen. He died in Texas in 1844, while serving as the United States Representative in negotiating Statehood for the Republic of Texas.
Tilghman Howard was a Trustee of Wabash College from 1833 to 1843. Howard Counties in Indiana and Iowa, as well as Howard Township in Parke County, were named after him. His sons served with Indiana regiments in the Civil War. Tilghman Jr. was killed in the battle at Uniontown, Kentucky in 1862.
Representing the Parke County Cemetery Restoration Commission were Karen Lewis (mother of Jim Lewis, Wabash '88) and Jim Wilcox, while alumni Jason Surber '92, John Asbury '75 and Craig Green '59 represented Wabash College.
As a further note, the Wabash alums gratefully paused twenty-two feet away at the grave of Lee McCanliss, a Wabash 1907 graduate, Trustee President (1940-1955) and successful Wall Street lawyer. He left an Endowment honoring his mother, Sarah, to Wabash College which has provided for almost forty years and continues to provide scholarships to Wabash students from Parke County.