This volume examines the issue of death in early Hartford City, Indiana. It looks at the early development of the town through the era of the "Gas Boom", the causes of death in teh local community, the early undertakers, tombstones and cemeteries. It also examines the two earliest cemeteries in what is now Hartford City: the old North Cemetery where Hoover Park is now located, and the old Predestinarian Baptist Church Grave Yard at the northeast corner of Mill and Water Streets.

The appendix contains a tribute to Cecil Beeson and Max & Judy Wiesenauer as preservers and records of local cemeteries, a listing of those reinterred at the Odd Fellows Cemetery from 1895 to 1910, and an inventories of the old North Cemetery and the old Baptist Grave Yard.