INSTALLMENT NO. 2 - IN PART
Every reader of these lines is destined to leave this life of strife and struggle, intermingled with sorrow and joy and take a trip to the Osage cemetery, or some other, from which no mortal returns. Theories, sophistries, philosophies, doctrinal arguments, arrive together in termination at the grove; which is the common lot of all.
When the pioneers were coming to this locality eighty years ago [1850's], most of them traveled via Janesville, Wis, which was the last source of supplies. Many were so poor they had no suitable or seasonable camping outfit. Croup for the children; pneumonia for the aged, were the common afflictions. Without facilities for home nursing and no medical advice to be had, it is not strange that deaths along the unmarked trail were frequent. Pioneers were forced to revert to primitive customs and bodies were interred "at just any old place" and the unmarked graves were seldom visited.
Deaths continued after the people had arrived in the Sannaan-like richness of the promised land of this immediate locality. The Harts, Moore's, Lewis's, were among the first to settle in 1852 and '53. Hiram Hart was first to file on land now within Osage, L.S. Hart, sr., and L.S. Hart, jr., took claims south toward the Lewis neighborhood. Orrin, a son of L.S. Hart sr., was the first death in the colony, Oct. 14, 1854, aged 24. He had filed on a homestead that was sold a year later to pioneer John Lewis, and the mortgage resulting is the first to be recorded in Mitchell county. The land is the same as became the home place of the numerous Lewis generations.
The second white child to be born was Major W. Hart, son of L.S. Hart, jr., Dec. 13, 1853. In the spring of 1854 were born Miss Mary Lewis and Mr. Henry Lesch who have each lived here continuously for 82 years. Their memory has contributed several items of history not obtainable elsewhere.
It is surprising how little any single person knows of the history of the Osage Cemetery. A search of the three thousand pages of the recorded history of the county reveals only nine lines that mention that a cemetery existed then or now. Nowhere is there a scratch of the pen that mentions the first cemetery where so many illustrious pioneers were laid away from late 1854 until early 1869. A publication by the United Map & Engineering Co., in 1926 shows the 30 acres of our present cemetery as part of the J.W. Eckford land. The A.T. Andreas Atlas of 1875 ends at the northwest corner of Osage without mention of a cemetery. The Atlas of Mitchell county, distributed by the Osage local press, 25 years ago, allots to the cemetery 23 84-100 acres.
We have in our possession the names and date of death of ninety pioneers buried in the cemetery now forgotten, who were disinterred and placed in the first 4 acre plat of the present cemetery. The 91st removal grave is that of John Stacy, disinterred at Janesville, Wis., and removed in 1872 via the new Cedar Falls and Minnesota railway. His death occurred March 16, 1856, aged 45. His wife made her home with her son, our late, well-known M.S. Stacy. They had been living at Mitchell, but with the removal of the county-seat to Osage, they followed to Osage in 1871, and the aged widow feared she might be laid to rest in a strange land far from her husband. Their gravestones may be seen side by side near the southeast corner of the first cemetery plat.
Under the system of allowing each owner to care for his own lot, the first cemetery lacked in attraction. It was an ill-kept, unfenced area of farmland. It was located on what is now the west side of Seventh Street at the point where the Illinois Central railway crosses. Most of the graves were on the southwest side of the present roadbed. Many graves were said to be left and all the very poor still rest under the thundering tracks and the shrieking whistling of the locomotives.
Miss Mary Lewis remembers that the main road then ran from Spring Creek by the south side of the cemetery and on into the Lewis colony. The settlers at first thought the county seat was for the future prosperity of Mitchell; the second town of note would be a mile or two south of where S.B. Chase, et al, managed to place Osage. They opined: "To what purpose would a willful people waste their substance eking out a meager living in that howling wilderness". (Now the site of Main Street, Osage.)
On the west side of 7th street on the lot just north of the railroad tracks, lives Myron Tucker who states there still remain three of the ancient graves on his premises. Henry Lesch, who has lived nearby for 82 years, has heard of the three graves there for as long as he can remember. Miss Mary Lewis also has lived nearby for 82 years, vaguely believes it is only two graves. Of one grave all agree it marks the last resting place of a known person, a Mr. Voltinburg, who died aged 34, either on the road near his journey's end, or promptly on arrival in 1856. He was a brother to the wife of the pioneer John Lewis and of course the uncle of numerous nephews and nieces, now living in and near Osage.
In those days it was the custom to often plant a cedar tree at the time of burial to permanently mark the sacred place of rest of departed loved ones. In this case the tree can be seen thriftily growing north of Mr. Tucker's house about a rod [16.5 Feet] from the sidewalk.
Planting a young tree at the newly-made grave is an old custom now little used in America.
Miss Mary Lewis remembers of the death and burial of her sister, aged 3 or 4 years, in this cemetery of the pioneers. She was ten years old at the time. That same year, 1865, she went to Charles City to see a new railway, but as there was present no train to demonstrate she was unable to figure out how a train could operate on two strips iron. That day she saw and ate her first apple, but it was not until Christmas day 1868 that she saw her first railway train, a publicity stunt, that traveled only as far as Osage.
When it was found in 1868 that the railway tracks ran smack through the old cemetery it forced the people to establish the present cemetery.
Transcribed by: Neal Du Shane
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NOTE: Information in brackets was added by the transcriber.