What is Jordan's Crossing?
Jordan's Crossing is the name used for Section 14 of Lindenwood Cemetery at 2324 West Main Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The History Center has described this part of the cemetery as an area set aside for African Americans. It is located in the cemetery's southwest portion.
This history begins before Section 14 existed. The cemetery opened in 1860, and cemetery records document Black burials in other Lindenwood sections during the nineteenth century. Section 14's earliest identified interments in the available transcribed register date to December 1911. The history cannot be reduced to a single opening day or a single uninterrupted burial policy.
The distinction matters: segregation in cemetery space is documented, but the original corporate rule or decision that established Section 14 has not yet been located in the research assembled for this project.
A short timeline of the evidence
The cemetery opens to the public in 1860. The cemetery's larger history precedes Jordan's Crossing.
1911
The transcribed registers record people later understood to be Black in Sections U, T, Q, and other areas. Section 14 was not the first resting place of all African Americans buried at Lindenwood.
Rosetta Gross and David Walters are recorded as buried December 12, 1911, both in Lot 114. Later records show that multiple unrelated people were interred in that same lot. One conflict remains in Walters's reported date of death.
The transcribed cemetery register documents Samuel Kaboo Morris's removal from Section U to Lot 1 in Section 14 on March 22, 1928. The same year, a larger monument was provided by Taylor University's Class of 1928.
The surviving historical-site sign records a dedication on September 5, 2004. Its text explicitly remembers African American ancestors and acknowledges discrimination, even in burial.
Research continues through cemetery registers, headstone transcriptions, photographs, family histories, contemporary journalism, and archival records.
The record of segregation
The transcribed cemetery register sometimes attaches the historical notation “(c),” used by clerks to classify people as “colored.” The annotation appears across multiple sections and decades, but not consistently. Its presence reflects a historical recording practice; its absence must not be treated as proof of a person's race or identity.
The surviving burial patterns show changes over time. The research dossier documents increasing Black burials in other Lindenwood sections as the twentieth century progressed, including Sections 13 and 24 and areas known as Paradise. Those observations describe a shift in where burial records appear; they do not, without other evidence, establish when formal rules changed or why individual families chose particular lots.
Families, migration, and civic life
For many of those recorded in Section 14, the register includes birthplace and last residence. Entries point to Fort Wayne and to places throughout the South and Midwest. Family names recur across decades, sometimes within the same lots. Those connections offer promising research leads into migration, congregations, work, civic organizations, and intergenerational family networks.
Shared surnames or lots do not automatically prove kinship. In some cases, a single lot contains many people whose familial relationships are unknown. The archive treats those questions as research invitations rather than assumptions.
Children and unmarked graves
Early death among infants and children is a prominent part of Section 14's records. A comparison of the 1,098-register-entry research roster identified approximately 182 infants under one year of age. That figure describes the proportion of recorded burials, not an infant mortality rate for Fort Wayne's Black population.
Many recorded burials have no confirmed surviving stone in the available 2011 headstone transcription. A missing transcription does not prove a grave was never marked. It may reflect loss, weathering, burial practices, transcription limits, or incomplete coverage. The exact grave spaces within large or shared lots often remain unknown.
What we are still investigating
Original cemetery policies and lot books; the circumstances of the 1911 opening; the people responsible for the 2004 memorial; additional cemetery records; original death certificates; graves without surviving markers; family relationships suggested—but not demonstrated—by the register.
How we evaluate the evidence →Sources and corrections
These conclusions reflect a working review of the ACPL transcribed burial records, a Section 14 research dossier dated October 2026, a 2011 gravestone transcription, and public historical sources. Please consult the research library for links and an explanation of where sources agree, conflict, or remain silent.