The original Burlington Cemetery was located at the northeast corner of Central and Market streets, where the boiler room and smoke stack for the old high school stand.

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The first burial at the old Burlington Cemetery, in the fall of 1833, was that of William Ross, father of Dr. William R. Ross, one of Burlington's earliest settlers. The cemetery remained a burial place until 1852, when the city passed an ordinance disbanding it and forbidding further burials. All persons buried there were to be removed, as well as all tombstones, fences, etc.
Relatives and friends moved bodies away to other locations, some to Aspen Grove. Those bodies remaining were moved to the new Burlington Cemetery, north of Aspen Grove. This area later became known as Potter's Field and is today located within Aspen Grove.
The following story is from pages 79 and 80 of Burlington on the Mississippi 1833-1983 which was published for the Burlington Sesquicentennial in 1983. Helen Turner McKim and Helen Parsons were the editors.
 "When the first surveyors started to plat the first two blocks into lots, they found a white paling fence around a wooden cross bearing the name of Maurice Blondeau, a well know half-breed fur trader. The grave was at the present site of the Hawkeye Bank on the south-east corner of Jefferson & Main. Jeremiah Smith came to the rescue and gave a hill a long way from the river as a public burial ground, and Blondeau's body was transferred. The aged father of Dr. William Ross, a Revolutionary War soldier, was the second person to be buried on the hill that was Burlington's first burial ground."
Hawkeye Bank changed its name to Two Rivers Bank. The plaque at the court house does not list a Revolutionary War veteran named Ross as being buried in Des Moines County.
 

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