Muscatine County Iowa Cemetery Records

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Directions to Harker Cemetery: From Route 61, five miles east of Muscatine, turn south on Sweetland Road. Travel a mile or so then turn East on 180th Street (gravel road). Cemetery is 1/4 mile on your left.

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Submitted by Eleanor B. McCleary, November 21, 2001
with permission from the Sweetland Township Trustees

Introduction

This project got started when we learned that the Sweetland Township Trustees did not have a listing of those who were buried in Harker Cemetery yet burials were still being made there today. All they had was an old, tattered, book with a partcial listing of Lot Owners and a Cemetery Plat that was made in November 1884 by J.A. Mathewson, Surveyor.

The task of re-creating cemetery records is like putting together a jig-saw puzzle; we had pieces of information from people who had walked the cemetery before, listings in WPA and County Court House records and a partcial listing of lot owners.

Along with my husband, Robert, and niece Jennifer Barrington, we read and numbered every stone. Mapping began with the basic technique of establishing vertical and horitzonal grid lines by using the fence posts that surrounded the cemetery. Then we got to figure out the logic used in each areas as described by the Plat map. That was quite a challenge for the stones were not aligned in nice straight rows with paths clearly defined between each Block. Nor were the Lots numbered in the same shaped pattern and shared consistent dimensions. To make it more confusing, at times gravemarkers were placed at the foot of the grave, others at the head of the grave and then there were some placed in the middle. It is always sad to find broken stones and worse to find them in a pile.

On November 19, 2001, the Sweetland Township Trustees were presented with two copies of all the documentation on Harker Cemetery Records. Their book of 220 pages contains the cemetery’s history, notes from the old cemetery book, glossary of terms, cemetery plat, lot owner index, lot owner register, a burial register according to Block, Lot and grave number and a burial record index. In very section are blank lines so they may enter future information.

Harker Cemetery is still accepting burials. For additional information contact the Sweetland Township Trustees.

Other names for Harker Cemetery, found in County Court records and obituaries, are Sweetland Cemetery, Sweetland Burying Ground, Harker Grave Yard and Hacker’s or Hawkers Burying ground. WPA records described area as Harker Cemetery on Flat Iron Point (a description several area residents disagree with).

The land on which the cemetery sits was deeded to the Sweetland Trustees by Joseph N. Harker and his wife, Lydia on 25th day of April 1853. The deed is filed in the Muscatine County Book of Lands ‘R’ on page 209. It reads in part:

In consideration of One Dollar, to us in hand paid by the Trustees of Sweetland Township in the County of Muscatine and State of Iowa, we have, and by these presents, do give grant and sell to them the said Trustees, in trust for the purposes hereafter explained, the following to wit:
Commencing at the South East corner of Section Nine, in Township Seventy Seven Range One West; thence running North Four chains and Seventy four links, thence South Forty one degrees and thirty minutes West, four chains and Sixty six links, to a Birch tree (center); thence south one chain and Seventy-seven links, then East three chains and forty six links to the place of beginning, containing one and twelve hundredths acres more or less. (Chains are Four Rods; one hundred links to a chain). To have and to hold to the said Trustees and their successors, forever, as a Burying Ground, in which to bury and any and all, white persons who may be brought there for sepulture, under such rules and regulations as said Trustees may from time adopt, and for no other purposes whatever. In testimony whereof, we have, hereto set our hands this 25th day of April A.D. 1853.

The 23rd day of January 1885, an addition was made to the cemetery when David Robinson and his wife Mary Ann, sold to the Harker Cemetery Association 51/100 of an acre for thirty three dollars. A plat of the cemetery was filed in the Muscatine County Book of Lots ‘15’ pg. 539 on 16th day of February 1885.

A small strip of land was sold to the Harker Cemetery Association for the sum of one dollar by C.F. Holtz and Amelia A. Holtz, his wife for the purposes for a roadway to the cemetery. This transaction was made on 22 March 1907.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

b. = date of birth	obit = Obituary from newspaper
d. = date of death	Co. Court rec. = Muscatine County Court House Records
dau = daughter of	GAR = Grand Army of the Republic - Civil War Era
na = none	WPA = Gravestones copied by W.P.A. Graves Registration Project.

- Differnces between cemetery and WPA records are noted.
- Persons that have WPA only means that it was the only source that named the burial location of that individual. I was not able to find confirmation of that fact in either Muscatine County Court House records or obituaries.
- When ‘Unknown’ is noted under Block and Lot unknown means County Court death records indicated burial was made in Harker Cemetery, but no gravemarker remains, nor was there record of burial found in old cemetery records. If an obituary was found, place of burial was not noted.

Click Here to view gravestone photos posted on the Iowa Gravestone Photo Project.