updated 08/25/2013

Note: Both of these articles were written in the fall of 1975 by the same newspaper correspondent, but were published in different newspapers. The articles are slightly different in the wording & may contain different bits of info., so both have been included on this page. The La Crosse Tribune article also included a couple photos.

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Old Cemetery is Tenderly Restored
Story and photos by Elnora J. Robey, Tribune Correspondent

NEW ALBIN, Iowa — What began as a personal challenge to clean up a forgotten and abandoned cemetery on Sand Cove, south of the Upper Iowa River here, has developed into a major research project for Eddie Colsch of Freeburg, Minn. “When I was a kid running all over the Cove,” said Colsch. “I used to think it was wrong to let the place (cemetery) go like that.” Periodically he or someone else would say something should be done about the pioneer Sand Cove Cemetery, but as Colsch says, “We were busy raising our family — nine children in 10 years. “Now the youngest is 23, and I decided if I was ever going to do anything, now was the time.” He found a willing helper in Kenneth Moore of New Albin and now retired, who grew up on a pioneer farm of the Cove.

Kenneth Moore

A total 232 hours was spent to clear the debris, replace grave marking stones, and fence the area. Colsch and Moore put in the most hours but had help from the 13 Colsch sons, brothers, in-laws, and cousins. Peter Colsch, a cousin who owns the land near the cemetery, helped from the beginning. The VFW post in New Albin contributed labor and $100 for materials. Even a softball team Colsch sponsors came down one evening. After the ground was cleared, grave markers had to be reset. Flat stones were set on edge into the ground at the head and foot of graves without monuments. “This sand becomes real soupy when it’s wet and cows had stepped on the rocks, pushing them into the ground,” said Colsch. “They all had to be reset.”

After 48 hours of research, Colsch has identified more than 50 graves. So far his research has indicated there were at least 69 burials. There are name markers for 26 graves. Existing monuments were a starting place in the research. Some are not easy to read; several are broken.

Walking through the cemetery, Colsch pointed to one inscription — McEwwan born in Scotland, died at Lansing, Iowa Aug. 19, 1867 at age 71. He removed a rock lying on top of the little grey granite marker. As he brushed the earth and moss from it, he exclaimed, “There’s a name.” It was Isabel.

Some area octogenarians recall tales their parents told from the early days of the Cove. One well-known story is about “the immigrant child.” The child died while the family traveled through the Cove and was buried on the barren hillside with the permission of the homesteader, thus beginning the burial ground.

The landowner probably was Leander Ferris, whose name is on this farm in a copy of the 1886 plat Colsch has in his notebook. According to the biographical section of the 1882 Alexander-Hancock “History of Allamakee and Winneshiek Counties,” Ferris was a native of Westchester County, N.Y., and came to Iowa in 1857 to settle in Iowa Township. He eventually bought other farms and became a justice of the peace in 1864.

Colsch is also going through the files of the Mirror and Journal newspaper at the Allamakee Journal office in Lansing. There, he found a reference to the Sand Cove church which is shown in the middle of the basin area of the Cove in an atlas. But Colsch can pinpoint it better than that. “It was in the field at the ‘T’ intersection we passed coming to the cemetery,” he said. “When I was a boy, there was a tree and an old well there, but there is no trace of either now.”

Census Bureau records and courthouse records have also yielded information. “The courthouse is supposed to have death records after 1880 but they haven’t had any of these, and some years are missing,” said Colsch.

He also has some large albums and portfolios in which he has pictures, many of these were in a woodbox in a Cove house. In a looseleaf notebook he assembles records and narratives typed by his daughter, Margaretta Hutchings. “I started biographies of Cove people,” he explained. “I write everything I learn. Of course, I’m not a writer,” he added. Of the many interesting sketches, the longest is a 2,500 word one entitled “Richard O'Donnell and Wife Mary Ferris O’Donnell.” The O‘Donnells lived to the west, within sight of the cemetery, and Mrs. O'Donnell was a daughter of Leander and Caroline Ferris.

Explaining Mrs. O’Donnell’s sorghum making, Colsch said one helper was “Mayme Moore, a young lady, this being over 70 years ago. This young lady is still a young lady of 91 whom I visited at La Crosse. . . She related to me how she helped with this job and at the end of the day her hair would become sticky from the evaporation of the juices.”

Colsch also gets data from diaries kept by his wife‘s grandfather, Clint Mulholland, which includes some information on the O’Donnells.

Some of Moore’s recollections are recorded, too. He has an anecdote about his own grandmother, Mrs. Martin Moore. Her husband had been injured in a logging accident, and evidently the deadline for filing for a land patent was approaching. Leaving her two children and husband, Mrs. Moore walked 100 miles alone to Osage to file it. She had the document recorded in Waukon April 16, 1859. “I still have the original,” Moore said.

Some of the last burials in the Cove Cemetery were of the Sadd family. Both Colsch and Moore recall Ed Sadd, then in his sixties, bringing a bouquet of wild flowers and weeping as he stood by his mother’s coffin. Phoebe Purington Sadd had fallen on Oct. 1, 1929, and knew she would not get well. On Oct. 9, she asked her son John to carry her to the door so she could look upon the beauty of autumn. The next day she died. John Sadd was the latest burial in Sand Cove Cemetery. He died at 94 and was buried Jan. 5, 1966.

The Cove sometimes has been stern to its people. It is a land of knolls that are knobby with rocks, though most now have a covering of scrub cedar and pin oak. There also are broad bands of pine trees planted by Peter Colsch and others in a tree-planting project. Eddie can point to some of the oldest that he himself planted.

Will Eddie Colsch record the land and its people in a book? He doesn’t say no, and it is plain he wants to memorialize them. “But,” he said, “I have a long way to go yet.”

Old gravestone at Sand Cove cemetery

~La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, WI, Oct. 13, 1975
~Transcribed by Errin Wilker

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Pioneer Grave Begins Cemetery
by Elnora J. Robey

Tradition holds that once upon a time when Iowa was young a migrating family camped on a sandy slope south of the Oneota near its confluence with the Mississippi. A child of the family who was ill died in that lonely encampment.

That father, it is said, asked the nearby settler for permission to bury the child on his land. Eventually another person died in the new settlement on what began to be called Sand Cove and was buried with due rites. Others followed. Adults and children were laid to rest beside "the immigrant child."

Sometime, someone began marking the graves by setting a large flat stone on edge at either end, leaving a seven or eight inch triangle of rock showing above the earth. Some of the dead were given monuments, slender tower-shaped structures of granite or the flat white gravestones that abound in northeastern Iowa, stones that have room for a carved design, names and dates, and a poem or Bible verse.

For as long as people can recall, the cemetery has been isolated, and for at least 50 years it has been a wilderness of trees and bushes, with only remnants of a fence around it. When the ground was wet, cattle trampled the rocks into the earth and some of the monuments were broken.

It seems not to have been connected with the church, although eventually a Sunday school was started on the Cove. Eddie Colsch, who grew up nearby and who has been looking into the area's history, found reference to the Sunday school in an 1872 paper. When he was a boy, almost 50 years ago, there was an unused well and a tree on the spot where the church had stood about a mile from the cemetery. Situated in a community where many of the people are Roman Catholic, the cemetery seems to have been an ecumenical venture and continues to be.

When Colsch, who said he has wanted to do something about that cemetery since he was a boy, got at it in earnest this year, his right-hand man was Kenneth Moore, grandson of a pioneer woman who in April, 1859, walked 100 miles from the Cove to Osage. She made the journey for a land patent when her husband couldn't because he was injured while logging to earn needed cash.

Peter Colsch, Eddie's cousin, who now owns "the McDonald farm" where the cemetery is located, cooperated with the project. A pile of brush on each side of the cemetery and scores of little and bigger stumps indicate how much work it was. Great lilacs had abounded, along with cedar, oak, bushes and weeds. The volunteers left one attractive little cedar tree in the corner and there are several bigger trees still standing.

Altogether 12 of Colsch's family members helped, with a few members of the local VFW post and some of a softball team he sponsors. The clearing, resetting of stones and fencing took 232 hours, with Colsch spending 67 and Moore spending 56. The VFW donated $100 for materials.

Some headstones tell a story, even if one does not know more than the information they give. Three little square markers bear the name Cooper, with birth and death dates indicating the graves contain children. Another monument has the family name McDonald and the name of a child on each of three sides.

One small square of granite has only "In Memory of Mr. and Mrs. Bowers," as though friends marked their graves. Moore added, "Well driller and seamstress." He said his father, Con, had related how Charlie Bowers, unhappy at how fast his rough was wearing out his clothes, made himself pants out of wheat sacks.

Most of the names no longer are found in this area. There are several members of the Milks family buried in Sand Cove. The grave of Joe Milks has a two-railed fence of iron pipe. For each corner there is a cup-like ornament and an iron dove will hover where diagonal iron straps cross in the center when Colsch gets it repaired. Moore recalls seeing birds drinking from the cups when he was a child.

Another stone that has interest is that of Caroline, the wife of Leander Ferris. Ferris owned the 80 acres on which the cemetery is located, having come to the Cove in 1858. He became a justice of the peace in 1864. Elizabeth Gordon and William Bennett were married by him in 1871, according to Colsch's research. Francis, their son who died in 1874 at the age of two, according to his tombstone, was probably their firstborn.

A monument that always seemed strange to Colsch lost some of its mystery when he removed a rock from its top and brushed away dirt and moss in preparation for its being photographed. The front merely has "McEwwan - Born in Scotland - Died at Lansing, Iowa, Aug 19, 1867. Aged 71 years." Colsch discovered the name "Isabel" in shallow carving on the top surface.

A desire to know who is buried in those other graves has given Colsch a research project, sending him to old newspaper files, census records, courthouse records, school records, old diaries, libraries and octogenarians.

Besides the 26 named graves, and a total of 55 marked graves, he has discovered there are at least 14 others, making a total of 69. Of many, there is no trace on the surface. In fact, there is nothing but the two men's memories to show the spot of the most recent burial, that of John Sadd, 84, who was buried beside other members of his family in January, 1966.

The words on the McDonald monument speak for all those in Sand Cove cemetery

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~Cedar Rapids Gazette, November 9, 1975
~transcribed by S. Ferrall

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