West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, May 7, 1931
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, May 25, 2018
UNKNOWN BENEFACTOR MAKES SPLENDID GIFT TO CEMETERY
A gift of $2,000 from an unknown donor, is the cause of much pleasure and satisfaction since it became known that this sum has been placed in the hands of Attorney Robert Brooke of West Liberty to be invested for the benefit of the West Branch cemetery. Mr. Brooke’s announcement states that there was placed in his hands “the sum of $2,000 to be invested for the benefit of the West Branch cemetery, and it will be an agreement of the trust that the ladies’ organization which has taken an active interest in the cemetery shall have the expenditure of the accruing income on the endowment fund.”
To all who have known this community a long time this gift will mean much. That it has been given to the West Branch Cemetery Association to spend the income from this fund was a wise and satisfactory provision. Few persons realize the work which this group has done toward beautifying and caring for the silent city on the hill. In this work they have had the very best cooperation of the city government, but the interested few who have had the Cemetery association management have planned and worked unselfishly for years.
Not only the cemetery now in use but the old graveyard on Downey street is cared for. More than fifty years have passed since burial was made in the little plot, but the old time stained stones still remind of the generation sleeping there.
In 1879 the Friends decided to quit burying in the old plot and arrangements were made for a new cemetery. Jesse Hoover was the first to be buried in the new cemetery. His tombstone was too tall to suit the early strict Quakers, and his widow, Hulda Randall Minthorn Hoover, had the stone sunk deeper in the ground to comply with the ideas of . . . in marking the graves of the dead. Other stones in the cemetery bear earlier dates than those of President Hoover’s father’s stone, but we are told they were moved from the old burying ground.
No gift could better express a desire to do something worthwhile and perpetual for this community than this $2,000 to be used in memory of those who lie in eternal rest on the hill.
