A LIVING HISTORY BLOG ~ November 2011
Captain Trustin Brown Kinder
In honor of Veterans Day this
month, I thought I would highlight the very first person who gave his life for
his country to be buried at Crown Hill. Trustin Kinder, son of Isaac Kinder, a
pioneer lawyer here in Indianapolis, and Maria Brown Kinder, graduated from Indiana Asbury College
(now Depauw) in 1843. He moved to
Paoli to begin his career and was admitted to the bar in Orange County in 1846.
When Company B of the Second Indiana Volunteer Infantry was organized there at
the beginning of the war with Mexico, Trustin was at first appointed first
lieutenant and later promoted to captain.
~ November 2011
The unit made its way to the war's front and Kinder was wounded at the Battle of Buena Vista. He was placed in an ambulance to be taken to the rear where his injuries could be tended to, but the ambulance itself turned over while crossing one of the battlefield's many ravines. As he lay there, unable to defend himself, he was killed by Mexican Lancers, one of seven members of B Company to die that day.
When word of his death arrived in Indianapolis, Isaac Kinder did something unusual. He made a long and at times dangerous journey to the Rio Grande to claim his son's body and return it home for burial in City Cemetery. There was a stop in Paoli where the residents of Orange County paid their respects before the father and son arrived in Indianapolis.
The funeral, held on July 12,
1847, turned out to be the most impressive the city saw until the death of vice
president Thomas Hendricks forty years later. (Hendricks' funeral procession, viewed by an estimated
100,000 mourners, surely holds the record.) He lay in state in the old Statehouse rotunda where thousands of
mourners came to pay their respects before finally being laid to rest in the
old City Cemetery near the White River. But that turned out to be
temporary. His body, the only Mexican war
battle casualty to be returned to Indianapolis for burial, was more quietly
reburied in a family lot at Crown Hill on November 2, 1864, five months after
the cemetery opened. Six other members of the Kinder family were re-buried with
him that same day.
Captain T.B. Kinder
Tom Davis develops and conducts tours for Crown Hill Cemetery. Considered by many to be Crown Hill's "unofficial historian," Tom's passion for the cemetery and those buried here has grown over many years. He likens the cemetery to a "museum of people" which includes one U.S. President, three U.S. Vice Presidents, fourteen U.S. Senators, eleven Indiana Governors, one Kentucky Governor, and one "Indiana King," as well as over 200,000 others. Tom can be reached at tdavis@crownhill.org.