Wilson Cemetery (Article)

BUSARD, WILSON, BLAKEKEYS, DUNN, STEWARD, SKYLES, JUDY, BULLARD, HEWETT, HAFFERTY, WALLACE, MITCHELL, DROLLINGER, KENT, CONNALLY, SLOAT, BRAYTON, SNIVELY, GRAESER, WEESE

Posted By: Maurine Beckstead (email)
Date: 10/16/2002 at 03:52:07

MADISONIA:By Ted Sloat, June 25, 1975
According to the dates in the family bible compiled by Charles Bussard in a genealogical history, the Wilson cemetery a couple of miles west of Fort Madison crowning the Bluff Road, its location identified by tall sombre cedars, was established when Hugh Wilson gave two acres there for burial ground in 1830.

This was three years before Iowa was opened to settlement following the Black Hawk War. Wilson has crossed the Mississippi into Iowa eight years before that, in 1825, according to family records, and built a cabin with three walls at the foot of the bluff where Bill's Cycle Shop is now located, formerly the old Sabe Wilson farm home on the Bluff Road.

Family legend says that the Indians were unfriendly and their hostility increased until two years later, in 1827 Wilson took his family back to Illinois near the present town of Industry.

However, the real reason he went back to Illinois may have been the approaching birth of his daughter who was born in Illinois that year.
Then in 1829 he came back to what is now Lee county and rebuilt his triangular cabin into one with four walls and more room. He also dug a cave beside the spring. A later generation erected a sawmill there.

Wilson picked the site of the graveyard on the blufftop for its beautiful view and its clean dryness as well as its safety from flood since he was not sure that the Mississippi wouldn't overflow the vast sand prairie at the foot of the bluff.

The first burial in the cemetery was the baby of Mr. and Mrs. George Wilson. Another baby was buried there the following year. From the first the cemetery was regarded as more than a family plot and other families in the neighborhood made burials there. Everyone helped with its care.
When the Black Hawk Purchase was completed and settlers allowed to come into Iowa, Wilson was unable to hold all the land he claimed and sent to Illinois for his relatives to come and help hold it through claims and purchase.

Hugh Wilson was 67 when he died in 1867 and was buried in the cemetery he created with a monument marking his grave. He and his wife were the parents of nine children, several of whom are buried there. Among early settlers who made burials there, bringing their dead up the old wagon road or carrying them up on the face of the bluff, were the Blakeleys, the Dunns, the Stewards, The Skyles, the Judys, the Bullards, the Busards, the Hewetts, the Haffertys, the Wallaces, the Mitchells, the Drollingers, the Wilsons, the Kents,and the Connallys.

Cholera filled many graves there during the epidemic more than 100 years ago, and many Civil War veterans sleep there, as well as some who fought in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Until 1884 the Wilson cemetery was looked after by members of the family and their neighbors.
In that year Eden Chapel, a Methodist church, was built at the Y west of Fort Madison where highways 61 and 2 join, and a board of trustees chosen to look after the Wilson graveyard, as everybody called it.

M.G. Kent was the first secretary. Later when word "graveyard" was beginning to be frowned on and "cemetery" preferred, Will Brayton who had become secretary, insisted on changing the name. The other trustees agreed and the burial ground became "Wilson cemetery". But they all spelled it "semetary" because none of them knew the correct spelling.

Funerals were held from Eden Chapel with Rev. Curtis Snively, the pastor, presiding, and when the steep wagon road to the cemetery washed out and wasn't repaired, the casket was carried up the steep face of the bluff with two or three sets of pallbearers taking turns. No burials have been made there for years.

One burial never took place there. An elderly couple, Henry and Margaret Graeser, were murdered in their cabin which was burned to try to hide the crime. They were buried in Wilson cemetery.

Henry Weese, another Jefferson township individual, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penitentiary here.

When he died in prison his body was taken to Wilson cemetery to be buried with other members of his family, but a group of neighbors were waiting at the cemetery entrance and refused to let the funeral procession enter.

Weese's body was taken back and interred in the old hilltop prison cemetery behinf the penitentiary.