Find A Grave Archives

February 20, 2015February 10, 2021

Bean Cemetery

I’m drawn to the quiet dignity of rural cemeteries. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know anyone there. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Bean Cemetery in Rome Township near Guysville in Athens County, Ohio, or it’s the Hitt Cemetery near Arbor or it’s the High Hill Cemetery north of Neely’s Landing. I’m not big on ghosts and spirits, but I feel a kinship walking among those strangers.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Feeling the bonds

When I did a story about the Cruse Cemetery near Toga returning to nature, reader Larry Points left a comment that shows he has experienced those same feelings:

“…one will find the Gravel Hill Cemetery on a knoll with a scenic overlook of the countryside. In it is a tombstone for a nine-year-old girl who died in the 1880s. Upon the stone is this eroded inscription: “Beautiful lovely she was but given, a fair bud to earth to bloom in heaven.” Standing alone at such a stone, in such a setting, imagining shared grief gathered round so long ago, one is drawn to the emotional ties which bond we humans one to another.”

Bean Cemetery

I didn’t find a lot of online information about the cemetery. FindaGrave reports there are 104 internments in the cemetery, with about half of them photographed.

As you might suspect, there are a lot of Beans buried there. (Curator Jessica commented, “They grow lots of Beans in that part of the county. Actually, that is true, in both senses of the word.”

The fields aren’t green today

Athens County gets Cape weather about two days after Cape. The lush green fields I photographed at the end of August have seen snow in the past few days and there’s more on the way.

The temperatures in West Palm Beach as I type this are a chilly 45 and falling. That’s a lot better than Athens, where it is -2 and falling (wind chill -15), headed for a low of -11 before sunrise.

Maybe Florida isn’t so bad after all.

January 6, 2014April 15, 2021

St. Mary’s Cemetery

When people talk about cemeteries in Cape, I think of Old Lorimier, New Lorimier, Fairmount and Memorial Park. I didn’t have any contact with St. Mary’s Cemetery until Wife Lila’s Mother, Lucille Hoffman Perry, was buried there in 1998.

There’s plenty of information on the city’s web site about the first three city cemeteries I mentioned, but all I could find in a quick search was that St. Mary’s is a Catholic cemetery that was founded in 1903. It is located on the west side of Perry Avenue where it turns into Perryville Road. The aerial was taken April 17, 2011. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

The bright driveway at the bottom of the photo wasn’t paved in 1998. It was just a rutted lane then.

Find a Grave

The Find a Grave site lists 953 internments (but not Lila’s mother) and says it has 38% of the grave markers photographed.

UPDATE

After the story was published, Sharon Sanders, Missourian librarian and the keeper of Judy Crow’s flame, emailed me with this new information:

Thanks for doing this blog. I had never seen an aerial of the cemetery. I can point to exactly where my parents are buried.

The land was purchased for the cemetery in 1903 by the Rev. Eberhardt Pruente, longtime pastor of St. Mary’s Church. He borrowed the money from his sister, who was also his housekeeper, to pay for the land. Pruente, as well as his sister, are buried in the crypt under the crucifix in the center of the burial ground. The land was part of the Wenzel Hauptman farm. Mr. Hauptman is also buried at St. Mary’s.

Many years ago, my late writing partner and I updated her earlier book on St. Mary’s Cemetery. It lists all those buried there, pertinent dates, who they married, who their survivors were, etc. It’s still available through the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society for $50.

February 25, 2013February 25, 2013

“Little German Church”

The sign in front of the plain, white church on Hwy N, two miles northeast of Delta (before the N.U.T. intersection), reads “Trinity Methodist Church” – “Little German Church.”

It looks like the foundation is made of field stones stacked atop each other with a little mortar to keep them in place.

What history he saw

I was amazed at the birth and death dates on Fritz Bock’s tombstone: the man was born before the Civil War and died in the middle of World War II. THAT’S a set of bookends you don’t see often.

I don’t know any of the church’s history, but the FindAGrave website has a pretty complete listing of the burials behind the building.

Little German Church photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

January 29, 2012

Cruse Cemetery Near Toga

We passed the Cruse Cemetery north of Toga on Stoddard County Rd 203 many a time on the way to visit one of Mother’s dearest friends, Daisy Zimmerman. When I paused there in the early 1970s, it was looking pretty shabby. (Click any photo to make it larger.)

Weeds had overtaken stones

It’s always disappointing to see any cemetery neglected, but this one is a fairly large one, with almost 200 interments in it, the Find A Grave website shows. The good news is that recent Google Earth photos show that it’s in much better shape today.

Local legend of the rich man

Somewhere along the line, I heard a story about a rich man who had been buried in this cemetery. Local legend was that the man had a fair amount of money and had always said he was going to take it with him. After he was put on the dark side of the dirt, it was said that his grave was dug up by someones unknown who thought that live crooks could better spend the stash than a dead man.

I don’t remember if anyone ever said if there was any treasure found, whether the grave was successfully dug up or any any other juicy details. The other piece of the story was that when he was planted again, this time his grave had a huge concrete slab poured over it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the slab, but I can’t locate any photos of it.

Another tombstone mystery

There are lots of interesting stories about cemeteries in the Advance area. There was once a family cemetery on the town square in Advance. The tombstones all mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. Nobody in town would give up the culprits. Even my mother and Daisy, who were wired in, claimed no knowledge of what happened to the stones.

Daisy, left, is no longer with us, so she kept the town’s secret to the end, if she ever knew it.