Stumbaugh Cemetery
Montgomery
Township, Section 14, Deer Creek, Ill.
Photographed by
Carole Martin, 2008/2009
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Stumbaugh Cemetery |
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Group eyes restoring Stumbaugh Cemetery in
Deer Creek area
Neighbors cut the abandoned cemetery's grass for the last several decades, and as tombstones toppled over, they'd get added to the pile to make moving easier. Recently the idea of renovating the cemetery was raised when Loretta Rush, wife of Orin Rush, one such former neighbor, asked her friend (and Times correspondent) Mary Eschelbach if Orin could be buried there. Orin is now in a nursing home and the couple are organizing his final arrangements, Loretta said. Seeing historical potential in the graveyard, Eschelbach organized a meeting for anyone interested in renovating the cemetery, which sits a couple of miles east of Deer Creek along Interstate 74. Though technically in Woodford county, it's on the border with Tazewell County and is commonly referred to as a Deer Creek graveyard. She said several people attended the meeting, including some Creve Coeur residents related to the people buried there. Also on hand was the Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society president John Durdle, and several others offering help. "We've had ... donations of everything from equipment to black dirt," she said. "And we had people come with their big thick family histories to show they were related to some of these people." She said others offered to donate air compressors, some offered to install a new fence, and Loretta offered her house for meals and bathroom facilities for volunteers. "It was just a wonderful meeting," Eschelbach said. Eschelbach was not able to find current proof-of-ownership at the county courthouse, but a local appraiser was able to find the deed, dated June 13, 1872, in which John Stumbaugh transferred ownership of the property to William McCloud. One of the last stones set at the cemetery was Milo Wilson Nethercut (1859-1935). One grave might contain the remains of a Civil War soldier. It states that W. H. H. Mooberry (1840-1913) served in the 4th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry. As restoration work is completed, more information about Tazewell county's early residents will be revealed. "We don't know how many soldiers' graves are her," she said. "Once we find out - that's the first thing we're going to do - who all has been buried here, then we'll look back at some of the histories and do some documenting of these people. I think that this project will go to completion." Many of the old marble headstones piled by the trees have become unreadable with age. "You can put chalk on them and that brings them forward, or you can dust them with flour," Eschelbach said. "That will bring out some of the old writing." She said another hurdle in identifying graves is that death certificates in Illinois weren't mandated until 1916. Grave dowsing In one step to make sense of the abandoned graveyard, Durdle has offered to perform grave "dowsing" duties, the old art of using copper wires to locate unmarked graves. "All he has to do is walk where there is a supposed grave and these copper wires, if it's a man they will cross. If it's a woman, just the right-hand copper wire will cross, and the other one will stay straight," Eschelbach said. "He did it on regular people and it worked." Durdle also said he can determine how long the person is, "so we can pretty well determine if it was a baby or an adult. Other than that, it doesn't put a name on it, or anything else." Durdle said burials were met with much less fanfare when Stumbaugh cemetery was in use. "Most people early on were not buried in vaults and they just had wooden caskets and those deteriorate over a few years," he said. "Like in Germany, the people are buried and in 20 years they'll bury somebody else there, but there's no embalming and they're buried in wooden coffins. And that's basically what was happening at the turn of century (here)." He said information discovered through he cleaning of Stumbaugh cemetery can add to the more than 15,000 volumes of family histories and information collected by the TCGHS. "It's part of our history," he said. "Everybody out there is a library. When they're gone that book is closed, what they know . . is gone." "We try to keep it alive as much as we can. That's why we're interested in genealogy and history, they kind of go hand-in-hand. Eschelbach said if anybody has a plat or "anything that would tell us how these folks are buried here," the items should be sent to the Woodford County Historical Society, 112 N. Main Street, Eureka, Il 61530. The items should be marked "Stumbaugh Cemetery." |
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'Witching' process uncovers lost graves Pekin Daily Times June 18, 2009 by Ed McMenamin, Times staff writer Montgomery Township - As John Durdle walks over the grave, the copper wires cross - and if it's a parlor trick, his hands don't give it away. Durdle, of the Tazewell County Genealogical and Historical Society, spent Wednesday "witching" or "dowsing" graves at the Stumbaugh Cemetery. A group of volunteers, organized by Mary Eschelbach, have begun to restore the graveyard, which predates the Civil War. They called in Durdle to apply his centuries-old practice. He uses two, 24-inch copper wires, each bent into an L shape, the bent portion just long enough to grasp. "Hold them fairly tight so they won't lean, but they're not flopping around," he said. "The right one crosses over the left one for a woman, and then when you go away they open up. For a man they'll both cross." Durdle said he has "no idea" how it works. "Some people say it's the chemistry in the body," he said. "But I don't know. Many of these have been gone for years and years, and there can't be much left of the bodies or anything here. "On a live person it does the same thing." Perhaps the wires cross when Durdle thinks it's a logical place for a grave and his posture shifts subconsciously - or maybe not. Either way, his arms and body don't betray any obvious movement, and the dowsing appeared to have worked. After placing white flags at more than 20 unmarked grave sites, another volunteer, Jack Young of Deer Creek, plunged a long wire into the dirt at each unmarked site, looking for headstone bases separated from their above-ground counterparts. The group found several bases at sites dowsed by Durdle, some buried more than 2 feet deep by erosion. Using both manpower and tractor power, the group began pulling the bases back up to ground level and refixing the headstones. Carole and Allen Martin of Pekin rebuilt several graves, using mortar and concrete to reattach some of the headstones pulled from the piles around the trees to the unearthed bases. "We had a 'Martha and George Strausbough,"' Allen Martin said. "We didn't know which side the girl and which side the boy were buried on. (Durdle) came out with his witching...and we knew which way to set the stones." The couple has spent many afternoons over past years renovating grave stones and cemeteries in the area. "It's a hobby," she said. "There's a lot of history in cemeteries. I've always been interested in them. We go looking for Civil War veterans and document them. "It's a way for us to pass our time, instead of sitting in a rocking chair." When the group started the project, weeds had over-taken the chain-link fence surrounding the cemetery, and stones were scattered helter-skelter. Now the brush is under control, and more and more headstones are finding their homes. "This is our third time out as a group," Eschelbach said. "It's really been exciting see how the volunteers have come together. "We didn't know each other. We had a meeting on the 10th of January and it was really cold. We put a note in the newspaper, and 14 people came. "Just being able to chalk these stones and read them more clearly, it's really coming along. It's changing the documentation." The idea to renovating the cemetery was raised this winter when Loretta Rush, wife of Orin Rush, a neighbor who used to cut the grass, asked Eschelbach if Orin could be buried in the cemetery. Orin is now in a nursing home, and the couple is organizing his final arrangements. |
