Chapter 4
CHURCH
GRAVEYARDS
I.
BACKGROUND
The
majority of burial sites visited in the Boonslick, out of 177, began within the
framework of a Christian house of worship, although in numerous instances the
actual church building and congregation have been gone for many years.
This poses some interesting questions.
It is coincidental that church graveyards date from the last half of the
nineteenth century? Are they lumped together in one county or one section of a
county? The records of the late
Lilburn Kingsbury, made in the late 1930’s, show almost twice as many private,
family and community burial grounds as are shown on the current county highway
map.1 Are there some
church graveyards missed as well? The
answer can be given quickly for the last question.
No, church graveyards were not missed.
Rather, it is church graveyards which have survived the ravages of time.
They are usually close to the road, and so they have more visibility and
thus a better chance of upkeep. Another
reason for the better care and use of church graveyards is that more people are
generally buried in a church graveyard and these burials tend to be
chronologically closer to the present. Therefore,
these graves stand a better chance of having living family to tend them or at
least to remember them. Also, even
if the family died out in the Boonslick, a church graveyard is maintained as a
unit so the graves will be tended. The
absence of laws to protect private family and community burial grounds from
destruction has certainly helped contribute to their demise, whereas, the
churches, as legal entities, also stand guard over the church graveyards.
As
the nineteenth century progressed, church graveyards replaced private family and
community burial grounds in the number of burials.
That is not to say that church graveyards were unknown before
mid-century, but they were not perceived as being as important.
The earliest settlers were Protestants of the more fundamental sects that
were not concerned about burials next to churches.
In fact, elaborate churches and graveyards were viewed with suspicion and
deliberately avoided. Out of the
177 graveyards surveyed in the Boonslick, 93 were connected with a church.
In Cooper County alone, 41 church graveyards were surveyed, close to half
of the total of the 93 Boonslick church graveyards found.
Certainly, in the Cooper County portion of the Boonslick area, the influx
of German immigrants helped account for this large number.
Most of these people were either Lutheran, Catholic or Evangelical, with
cultural roots which favored burial in ground connected with their religious
denomination. This is more than
twice the number of private family and community burial grounds.
All of the graveyards except St. Martin Cemetery (C36), the Boonville
Catholic Cemetery and Boonville Reformatory Cemetery (C11), and the Pilot Grove
Catholic Cemetery (C38) are Protestant burial sites, although the various
Protestant sects run the entire gamut of religious beliefs.
Sometimes
the church members decided to construct a new building in a different location
and the graveyard was then abandoned as a church graveyard.
In one graveyard in Howard County at a former church named Salt Lick
(H72), a marker installed about the time of World War I by the Daughters of the
American Revolution (DAR) marks the site of the original Boonslick Road that ran
to this region from the East and states that the church sat beside the road
until 1847 when it moved.2 Only
two gravestones could be located in the mass of brush run riot, but the size of
the thicket suggests a graveyard of approximately 24 graves.
The two that were located and recorded date from before the War Between
the States. When the church moved,
its name was changed to Ashland Christian Church (H75) and a new graveyard was
started at the new location, leaving only a few people still to be buried in the
former site, probably next to a spouse or child. The older graveyard was quickly abandoned as a new cemetery
(planned for burials and not adjacent to a church) near the new church filled
with burials.
Other
cultural considerations helped shift the balance in favor of church graveyards.
Although mentioned only in oral tradition, the advent of Memorial Day and
the attendant decorating of graves became especially prominent in the last
quarter of the century in the Boonslick, although the decoration of graves and
the idea of a “work day” were already in existence.3 This, combined with the ideas of family togetherness in a
graveyard, and of religion as a part and parcel of family life certainly helped
to sway the local populace toward church burials, abandoning the family plots.
Regular religious practice was viewed as the purview of a woman as was
the family and caring for the ill. Certainly
women developed a bias in favor of a church graveyard by the end of the
nineteenth century. It is no
coincidence that the custom of a national Memorial Day was started by a woman.
Memorial
Day as a national holiday was begun by a Boonslick native, Mary Simmerson
Cunningham Logan, who was born in Boone County near Sturgeon (illustration_24.htm).
She was the daughter of John M. and Elizabeth H. Fountain Cunningham, a
storekeeper, and his Southern wife, who moved from Boone County to Illinois to
avoid the issue of slavery. Mary
Simmerson Cunningham Logan was the wife of John Logan, who became a Union
General and later was Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic after the
hostilities ended. Mary’s mother,
Elizabeth Fountain Cunningham, was a cholera victim in 1866 and soon after her
funeral, Mary saw how lovely Confederate graveyards were when decorated with
flowers.4 The two
events stuck in her memory and at her insistence, her husband commanded the
Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) to have a similar Memorial Day beginning in
1868.5 It was so
successful that eventually it was proclaimed a national holiday.
This is mentioned here because Mary was a well-known figure in the
Boonslick, being the fourth generation of her family to live in the area,
although she had moved to Illinois as a child.
Many lines of her family tree, including rabid southerners, Santa Fe
Trail traders, Western adventurers, solid farmers, and the average run of the
mill citizens, were rooted here and Memorial Day was not only a day of
remembrance for dead soldiers, but a time of solidarity for one of the
Boonslick’s own.6
As
shown by the attached highway maps of Boone, Cooper, and Howard Counties, church
graveyards are evenly dispersed throughout the three counties.
The eight major characteristics of Boonslick church graveyards are:
1. The
cemetery or graveyard is or was adjacent to a church, although the graveyard may
predate the church. The only
exception to this is the Catholic Cemetery and Boonville Reformatory Cemetery
(C11) (which was included in this
church section because religious consideration lay a large part in that burial
place.) One church, Copps Chapel
(C21), appears to have been constructed strictly as a place for funerals and was
never used for other religious services.7
2. Church
graveyards begin almost immediately beside or behind the church. However, the church may now be some distance away which us a
clue that this particular building is not the original one even if the building
style does not proclaim that.
3. All the
Protestant graveyards have an east and west orientation as do the Catholic
graveyards with the exception of two. St.
Martins Graveyard (C36) and the Pilot Grove Catholic Cemetery seem to have a
north and south row pattern because of land transactions rather than religious
reasons. Most of these church
graveyards to not have official plats; burial placement is done by lining up the
grave with the adjacent burial and perhaps measuring to be certain the row
is
straight. Because of this lack of
accurate records, older graves are sometimes encountered.
When this happens, the dirt is replaced and a new grave started a few
feet away. The inscription on the
actual gravestone, however, may be either on the east or west side and may vary
within the same graveyard.
4. Families
are buried together as a group with the married couple forming the nucleus.
The burial positions follow closely the Upland Southern traditions.
Although a few German graveyards such as Pleasant Grove Lutheran Church
Graveyard (C19) and St. Martin Catholic Graveyard (C36) began with burials in
chronological sequence, they quickly abandoned this practice for the family
grouping.
5. Most
church graveyards contain their majority of burials from the last quarter of the
nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Recent interments are people who already had family buried in the church
graveyard. However, in Boone County,
which is experiencing more growth, this premise is not completely accurate as
the churches near the county seat are undergoing expansion, not only in
membership, but also in use of the graveyard by new families.
Examples of this trend include Bonne Femme Baptist Church Graveyard (B51)
and Olivet Christian Church Graveyard (B43).
6. There is
no formal landscaping of the grounds as one entity.
Many church graveyards have entrance gates, fences, and randomly placed
trees and shrubs. Still, not one of
these 93 church graveyards has been professionally planted, showing the
individualism and the conservative cultural nature of these places.
7. The
overwhelming majority of gravestones found in these church graveyards show that
the people served were almost always of farm extraction.
After all, these church graveyards are all rural or in an area that was
rural when the church and graveyard were begun. Churches in town used the municipal cemeteries, although some
churches might establish control over a graveyard or a section of a graveyard.
Most rural gravestones were simple and not of the towering sizes found in
the municipal graveyards.
8. Many of
the older church graveyards adjacent to the Missouri River have locally carved
stones. These simple stones may or
may not contain inscriptions, but they were usually cut into slabs, rather than
being merely a rock placed upon the grave.
The placement of this type and style of stone in these early church
graveyards is a reflection of the early settlement patterns along the Missouri
River.
A closer look at a church graveyard from each of the three
Boonslick counties shows the similarities and the individual traits of each.
CLARK’S
CHAPEL METHODIST CHURCH GRAVEYARD IN HOWARD COUNTY
Probably the oldest established church congregation in the
Boonslick still using the same tract of land and graveyard is Clark’s Chapel
United Methodist Church and Cemetery (H57) (illustration_25).
Located in Section 36, T49N, R17W
in Franklin Township, Howard County, this complex is one of those that falls
between the cracks in nomination work for the National Register of Historic
Places. The church is perfectly
maintained and the graveyard is also in perfect shape with not a footstone
missing. Both cemetery and church, however, are exceptions to the rules for the National Register of
Historic Places, and the lack of a county or regional wide survey to show the
unique contribution of this church and cemetery has stymied efforts to place
them on the Register. Certainly,
this complex deserves the recognition. Ironically,
in this graveyard is buried Lilburn Kingsbury, the only other person to
undertake rigorous cemetery survey work in the county.
The church began in 1818 as a Methodist congregation and was still
active in 1989, although greatly diminished in number of members.
The church building is not the original but is historic.
There was once also a school associated with the complex.
The church grounds (illustration_26) are absolutely typical of the church
and graveyard complexes of the Boonslick. Clark’s
Chapel Church sits upon a high hill, a grassy bluff overlooking the Missouri
River across the flood plain. On
this bluff Easter Sunrise services were held for the entire regions in March
1989 as recognition of the importance of this church building, graveyard, and
the former members of the congregation to the Boonslick.
The church building sits to the south of the graveled parking lot forming
the first impression of the complex.
The oldest gravestone in the graveyards is to the left of the
church about 50 feet and marks the grave of Mary Mahan who died in 1824
(illustration_27). Other stones
dating to the 1830’s and 1840’s are behind the church on a flat area before
the ground begins a descent to the flood plain.
Mary Mahan’s stone stands apart for that date, which could mean that
she is the only burial in that section and others were not buried there for one
reason or another. Mary Mahan’s
gravestone proclaims she was “a member of the Baptist church” so perhaps she
was buried there apart since she did not belong to the Methodist congregation.
Or, perhaps her stone is alone because others that were buried in that
part of the graveyard did not have marked graves.
Her husband and his four later wives are buried 25 miles south at New
Lebanon Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Cooper County (C51).
A comparison of her gravestone with the stones to her husband's second,
third, and fourth wives (illustration_28) shows that the markers to these four
wives of James Mahan are identical. Since
the fourth wife, Sarah Mahan, died in 1848, perhaps the four time widowers,
James Mahan, decided to mark all the wives at the same time and thus chose the
identical gravestones. This could
explain why this solitary gravestone was placed in Clark’s Chapel Graveyard,
and since the impetus came from an outside source, perhaps Mary was alone in
being given a marker in that section, even though there were other graves.
The widower, James Mahan, buried a fifth wife before he finally died at
age 92 and was buried alone in his own lot (Illustration
29), the original lot
he bought at New Lebanon Cumberland Presbyterian Graveyard being completely
filled with his wives. One
satirical visitor commented that perhaps he was enjoying the peace and quiet
after living with so many different women.8
Be that as it may, except for the area around Mary Mahan, the area
behind the church is fairly well filled with local gravestones of several
styles, but all locally made (illustration_30). To the east of the church and several yards away from the
Mary Mahan grave begins the Romantic and Victorian portion of the graveyard.
Modern burials are continuing to the north of the area away from the
bluff. Just about every type and
style can be found here except for metal markers.
One lot retains its iron fence with entrance gate.
The memorials to children follow the typical pattern of gravestones
designed to emphasize a life ended too soon.
Of interest in this section is the gravestone to Della Smith Whitten, who
died in 1899 at age 28. Her stone
features a small lamb reclining which is a typical motif from the period, but
only used on the graves of children. Did
this woman die from complications at pregnancy or childbirth that might have
suggested the appropriateness of a child’s motif?
Or, perhaps she was retarded and never progressed beyond a child’s
mental level? Or was this stone
simply within the price range the family wanted to pay and they liked it?
The graveyard slopes to the south down toward the flood plain.
No stones are found in this lower section where oral tradition says that
slaves who were members of the church were buried.
This is very possible since Clark’s Chapel is early enough to belong to
the period when slaves and owners attended religious services together.
No archaeological survey has been done to determine this.
Clark’s Chapel Church and Graveyard exhibits all eight of the
characteristics defined earlier as typical of Boonslick county church
graveyards: The graveyard is
adjacent to the church; it features all burials in an east and west orientation;
the graves are behind and to one side of the actual church; the burials are
grouped into family lot configuration; there are numerous burials from the
latter part of the nineteenth century (although it does contain early burials
from before the mid-nineteenth century since it is located adjacent to the
Missouri River); it features a wide variety of gravestones, with most in the
simple style and lower price range bought by those who were rural dwellers;
locally carved stones are present; and landscaping is not uniform throughout the
grounds. (Families place upon the
lot what is desired.) On the
Kingsbury lot there is a rose bush planted in 1870 by R. T. Kingsbury in memory
of his wife, Sallie Smith Kingsbury, who died in childbirth and is buried
beneath this rose. Mr. Lilburn
Kingsbury once wrote a newspaper column about this bush.
His mother, the second wife of R. T. Kingsbury, was Alice Smith, sister
of Sallie Smith Kingsbury. The rose
blooms each May around Memorial Day, and both his father and his mother, even 50
years later, would scatter the rose petals from the bush over Sallie’s grave
and cry.9
III.RED TOP (DISCIPLES OF CHRIST) CHRISTIAN CHURCH GRAVEYARD IN BOONE COUNTY
The Red Top (Disciples of Christ) Christian church and graveyard
(B20) has served the Hallsville area of Boone County since 1822.
It is located in Section 15, T50N, R12W in Rocky Fork Township in Boone
County. While it is also a
Protestant denomination, it is a different one from Clark’s Chapel and might
be expected to exhibit some differences. At
the time of the founding of both of these churches before 1825, the Methodist,
Disciples of Christ Christian or Campbellites, and Baptist denominations were
competing for the souls of the settlers of the Boonslick region.
Even though they professed great theological differences, the actual
buildings and graveyards they built look almost identical.
The land for the Red Top complex was purchased formally on October
5, 1835, from Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts who moved to the Boonslick in
1816. The price was $1.25 for the
one acre tract.10 The
church had been organized on October 5, 1822 and was known by the name Liberty
Church. It featured an inscription
stating that when the house was not in use by those regularly meeting there for
worship, it was open or “at liberty to be used” by any religious body
wishing to worship in it. This
first log building contained gable ends stained with a hermetic or red
“keel”, taken from a creek bed about four miles to the west of the church.11
By the time of the official deed in 1835, this congregation had
been in existence and using a building on this recently purchased land for
thirteen years. According to the
church history, “This site had been used as a burying ground for the community
before the church was formally chartered.”12
In 1835 the original log church burned and a second building was
erected. This one contained two
rooms, had a fireplace at each end, and a red roof.
The name was changed officially to Red Top. The third and present church was constructed in 1867 with the
seating capacity of 400. When this
church was constructed, it was built on six additional acres of land purchased
from Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts’ son, Richmond T. Roberts, who
evidently lived on the farm at that time. Nathan
Roberts had died in 1846.13 This
is important because the purchase shows that the present church is not on the
site of the original church, to which the graveyard was adjacent.
Even so, the graveyard has grown to reach this third church and to the
casual viewer it appears to have been laid out immediately to the north of the
present building. In the early 1940’s, Mr. C. F. Rumbaugh donated a portion
of land to the graveyard which also increased its size. The map (Illustration 31)
shows the probable location of the
original church since the earliest gravestones are found to the west in the rear
of the graveyard and the most modern to the north along the front in the land
donated during the 1940’s.
Red Top (Disciples of Christ) Christian church and graveyard (B20)
was chosen as the sample for Boone County, because unlike Clark’s Chapel
(H57), the graveyard is still in active use.
Hallsville has no municipal graveyard, probably because Red Top was
already established by the time the town was founded, and the vast majority of
burials of local people are held in this graveyard.14
Red Top Graveyard has a larger modern section than is typical for many of
the church graveyards. Since it has
been in existence for such a long period, most of the local populace either
belongs to this church or is descended from someone who did.
This graveyard contains the oldest style of gravestones found in
the Boonslick, anthropomorphic headstones and footstones
(illustration_32).
The earliest intact anthropomorphic gravestone is in the Jewell family
cemetery in Columbia (B37) on the grave of Angelina Hardin (a niece of William
Jewell), who died at six months of age in 1822 (illustration_33).
In both burials, the stones are about three feet tall with an abstracted
head and neck. Rounded shoulders
lead to straight sides with the information about the deceased carved
primitively on the front of the inside (east face) of the larger headstone.
The footstone at the Jewell graveyard also features a small
anthropomorphic form. At Red Top
there are four anthropomorphic stones. The
two further west are inscribed on their east while two stones are plain.
The inscribed ones are to the west of the plain ones in a straight line,
conforming to the patterns seen in upland South graveyards. Primitive carving on the two engraved stones commemorate
Elizabeth Roberts who “departed this life” in 1830 at age three and Thomas
Roberts who was “deceased” in 1829 at age 31.
Oral tradition states that the other two plain stones mark the graves of
Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts, who sold the land for the church and
graveyard. But Nathan Roberts did
not die until 1846 and Priscilla White Roberts signed the church deed in 1835.
Their anthropomorphic form is too early to belong to either Nathan or
Priscilla White Roberts. Although it is very likely that Nathan and Priscilla White
Roberts are buried in the immediate vicinity, these two plain stones are
obviously footstones for the graves of Elizabeth and Thomas Roberts.
Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts also belonged to the first
generation of settlement. As is
true throughout this entire region, this generation did not place as much
emphasis upon marking the actual burial spot as the next generation would.
Thomas Roberts was the son of Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts and probably
Elizabeth Roberts was their grandchild. According
to the 1883 History of Boone County Missouri, Thomas Roberts was “the
first white person buried in the Red Top churchyard.” 15 Thus these
anthropomorphic stones are the first markers on the first “white” graves.
An interesting inference from the above quotation is that there probably
are slave graves in the graveyard.
The anthropomorphic headstone and footstone for Thomas Roberts (Illustration
34) dating to 1829 are identical in every way to the ones made for
Angelica Hardin in the Jewell Cemetery (B37) dating to 1822.
The anthropomorphic stones for Elizabeth Roberts are dated to three years
later than Thomas’, 1832, and they show that abstraction had taken place.
The rounded head with the carving for Elizabeth Roberts has been broken
and sloppily repaired at some point in the past, but appears to be complete (Illustration
35). At the base of
the head in the neck area, instead of being rounded like the stones of Angelica
Hardin and Thomas Roberts, the stones for Elizabeth Roberts are basically flat
with only a hint of a curve when compared to the other two.
Thus, by 1830 this type of marker was in decline and perhaps the latter
one was made by someone other than the person who made the first two.
In either case, it is a style found only on very early graves.
These stones are identical in design to the stones made for Daniel
and Rebecca Boon (spelling from their stones) (Illustration
36) for whom the
region is named. The Boons were
buried at Marthasville near Defiance in eastern Missouri. These original stones were thrown in a corner and left when
the bodies were returned to Kentucky in the 1840’s for reburial.16
By 1889, they had been donated to Central Methodist College in Fayette,
Missouri, to be on display in the same county where the salt lick that was made
famous by the family is located. Daniel
Boon is supposed to have had stones carved by a local blacksmith and paid for
them before he died.17
At New Salem Baptist Church Graveyard (B60), there is also an
anthropomorphic stone like the one to Thomas Roberts. All four of these anthropomorphic stones in situ are in Boone
County and all date from before 1835. That
these stones match so closely the Boon gravestones show this was the style
considered proper by the very first settlers into the Boonslick.
Probably one or two people at most carved these stones.
The carving on the Red Top stones appears to be done by an illiterate
person who did not understand the lettering system.
The last name “Roberts’ is broken into two lines on the stone to
Elizabeth Roberts thus, Rob-erts. This
is not phonetically correct and apparently was done as the carver ran out of
room on the top line and merely started the next line when he ran out of space.
Perhaps the carvers were slaves. Slaves
often did the masonry work in the Boonslick during this time period under the
supervision of a white overseer as shown by the extant masonry still in use in
Arrow Rock, Missouri; they had the training to make things out of stone.
No evidence has come to light to confirm or deny this conjecture.
Certainly, the Roberts family could read because their family Bible with
a family genealogy in Nathan Roberts’s handwriting is still in existence, but
for unknown reasons, Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts merely signed an
X to
the church deed.18
These anthropomorphic stones are now in the rear of the graveyard
and are near the creek. Assuming
that the church building was adjacent, as is true in other Boonslick church and
graveyard combinations, the church must have been to the west and nearer the
creek.
Following to the east from the anthropomorphic stones, the markers
fan out, showing that the immediate area was first filled and then the graveyard
went both east and north. The area
behind the present church is still empty. There
is no oral tradition about a slave section.
The only reference is the 1883 History of Boone County, Missouri
quotation. Since burials are
logically arranged throughout the entire grounds, if there are slave burials
they must be interspersed throughout in the family sections, perhaps with the
family who owned them. This configuration is true in other private family and
community Boone County burial grounds. They
might be in the western part of the graveyard in a small vacant section that is
believed to be the site of the first church.
Landscaping of individual graves can be found at Red Top.
The creek is slowly creeping north due to erosion and cutting closer each
year to the older section of the graveyard.
It is now perilously close to one of the old cedar trees.
Rose bushes are found on a few graves, but modern lawn mowing practice
has discouraged very much landscaping, because the lawn of Rep Top Graveyard is
impeccably groomed every summer.
Thus, Red Top (Disciples of Christ) Christian Church Graveyard exhibits
the eight characteristics of Boonslick church graveyards: east and orientation; it
has always been adjacent to a church; the church has moved and the graveyard is
now immediately to the side; families are buried together (in the case of Red
Top, Nathan and Priscilla White Roberts really produced a brood – half the
graveyard seems to be family members); the lots are individually landscaped; the
largest group of burials are from the last quarter of the nineteenth century;
most of the people buried at Red Top are of farm extraction; and locally carved
gravestones can be found in the graveyard.
Both Clark’s Chapel United Methodist Church and Graveyard and Red
Top (Disciples of Christ) Christian Church and Graveyard were founded by white,
Upland Southern settlers who came out of the same cultural tradition.
In Cooper County, this same ethnic group also led the first settlement,
but the pioneers steered clear of the prairies in the central section of the
county and settled along the Missouri River and its tributaries.
When the large influx of German immigrants occurred halfway through the
nineteenth century, Cooper County had land available for them to purchase and
settle. These people picked a
fortunate time to settle on the prairies, because recently developed plows
allowed the harsh prairie grass to be turned under more easily.
Soon, the prairie sections of the county were bastions of Germans,
carrying with them their cultural traditions, language, religion, and belief in
burial adjacent to their church.
PLEASANT
GROVE LUTHERAN CHURCH AND
GRAVEYARD IN COOPER COUNTY
Pleasant Grove Lutheran Church and Graveyard (C19) was one of the
church complexes established by this ethnic group in the Boonslick (Illustration
37). Located in Section 34, T48N,
R15W in Prairie Home Township in Cooper County, the church was organized in
1855, making it a good thirty years younger than the other two.19
By 1883, the church complex consisted of four acres of land, a church
building, and a parsonage with a valuation of $1,000.20
There was also a parochial school associated with the church by the
twentieth century.
A graveyard was soon needed and established to the north of the
present property. A Victorian photo
shows the church, parsonage, and graveyard at the turn of the century (Illustration
38). The graves began
at the northeast corner of the graveyard and proceeded southward in a straight
line in chronological order of death until about 1890.
At that time, the cult of the family unit and the contemporaneous
Americanization of the immigrants’ children caused a change to family plots.
However, the rows were kept straight as much as practicable.
The inscriptions on the first stones were in German, like the
sermons and the school lessons. The
motifs of these stones are identical to the others in the region, but the
were available, or perhaps these gravestones had universal appeal to all
the various groups living in the Boonslick who could afford to purchase them.
The latter seems more probably as Charles Van Revenswaay has shown that
other German communities produced very different gravestones.
The stones are very similar throughout the grounds.
The rural motif is found in Woodsmen of the World gravestones in the
graveyard. These interesting and unusual stones are discussed in Chapter
10.
World War I and the attendant problems with the German language and
the prejudices about it have resulted in many Boonslick German records either
being destroyed or forgotten. Charles
Van Ravenswaay in The Arts and Architecture of German Settlements in
Missouri: A Survey of a Vanishing
Culture, says that “one of the most remarkable qualities of these
immigrants, as a group, was their idealism….It justified to them the
additional labor spent in building…intended not only for their own use but
also for succeeding generations.”21
Certainly the beauty of the Pleasant Grove Lutheran Church with its spire
which dominates the landscape gives credence to the above quotation.
When a tornado damaged this spire in the 1980’s, the parish voted to
restore it rather than remove or patch it.22
Burials in Pleasant Grove Lutheran Graveyard quickly copied the
Upland Southern tradition found in the rest of the Boonslick.
It is in graveyards like Pleasant Grove Lutheran where this struggle can
be seen between the traditional ways of Europe and the new ways of this rough
American society. The new ways won and by the 1980’s most natives of the
Boonslick were descendants of both Upland Southern ancestors and German
ancestors.
23
Pleasant Grove Lutheran Graveyard also contains the eight common
characteristics found in Boonslick church graveyards.
ENDNOTES
1Kingsbury, Lilburn, Map of Howard County Graveyards in
Archives of Friends of Historic Boonville, Boonville, Missouri.
2DAR marker alongside road in Howard County, Missouri.
3Interview with Lucy America Fountain Morris, president of
the Centralia Graveyard Association during Memorial Day in 1970.
4Logan, Mrs. John A., Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), p. 243.
5Ibid p, 245.
6Interview with Lucy American Fountain Morris on Memorial
Day in 1970.
7McVicker, Maryellen H., Preliminary National Register of
Historic Places form prepared in 1988 for Clark’s Chapel United Methodist
Church, Howard County, Missouri.
8Remark by Sharon Korte, co-owner of Memories of Missouri,
which specialized in the historic Boonslick on seeing the gravestones in March
1989.
9Kingsbury, Lilburn, Private papers and newspaper clippings
now in the Missouri State Historical Society and Western manuscript Historical
Collection in Columbia, Missouri. Unlabeled
file containing Boonville Daily News clippings.)
10National Register of Historic Places nomination
form prepared by the minister of Red Top (Disciples of Christ)
Christian Church in 1982 and then withdrawn from consideration.
Price given as taken from abstract.
11Hodkins, Robert, Red Top Christian Sesquicentennial
1822-1972, Disciples of Christ, Hallsville, Missouri, (typewritten and in
collection of author), p. 3.
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Interview with Frank “Bud” Elkins, Boone County Sheriff
and Hallsville resident, in the Summer of 1976.
151883 History of Boone County, Missouri
(St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1883), p. 1106.
16Records from Stephens Museum at Central Methodist College,
Fayette, Missouri.
17Ibid.
18Information about the Roberts family taken from Nathan
Roberts family Bible in possession of the author.
191883 History of Howard and Cooper Counties,
Missouri, (St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1883), p. 827.
20Ibid.
21Interview with Gladys Blank, who grew up in the
neighborhood, on March 1, 1989.
22van Ravenswaay, Charles, The Arts and Architecture of
German Settlement in Missouri: S Survey of a Vanishing Culture (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1977), p. 18.
23Church information in the Archives of the Friends of
Historic Boonville in Boonville, Missouri.
Author
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