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A family graveyard in the northwest corner of Monroe County, Indiana serves as the final resting place for two veterans of the American Revolution. While their legacy endures, their physical presence would almost certainly have been overshadowed by that of a Civil War soldier also buried in the Buskirk/Abel/Wampler cemetery. David Van Buskirk, better known as “Big Dave” or the “Big Lieutenant,” was reportedly the tallest man in the Union Army.
Current events have reacquainted Hoosiers with the state’s role in the history of US manufacture of chemical weapons. Since 2005, the Army has been neutralizing a stockpile of V-X nerve agent that had been made and stored at the Newport Chemical Depot since the 60s.
As it turns out, Colonel Sanders’ life story shares some fascinating parallels with that of a different colonel, for whom Sanders’ hometown was named. A one-time colonel of a regiment of Pennsylvania militia, Henry Ferguson came to Indiana in 1840, purchasing land in the vicinity of present-day Henryville.