Union Cemetery, Richie, Cherokee County, Kansas

John and Mary Kekec (nee Kieslich) put together the booklet below which is a directory of the Union (Richie) Cemetery in Cherokee County, Kansas. They have many family members and friends buried there and have spent many hours over the years mapping out the grave sites and preparing the directory. They have repaired many crumbling tombstones and reset them after they had fallen over and/or were knocked over while mowing the grass. Other family members have weed-eated, and performed other forms of maintenance over the years and have recently had a metal sign fabricated and erected at the cemetery.

The purpose of writing this booklet is to gather and preserve the record of the people buried in Union Cemetery that is known at this time. Anecdotal stories of personalities buried there are also included. There is no sexton for the cemetery and the written records that were kept from time to time have been lost. Even tombstones, which in effect are records set in stone, often get broken or deteriorated so badly that the inscriptions are not legible. Some records may be found in the archives of the funeral homes but mostly they are in the recollection of our older citizens. I gratefully wish to acknowledge all those who have helped me with this project, especially my husband, whose help was invaluable.

Union Cemetery

There is a sense of timelessness about this peaceful old cemetery where so many of my ancestors have been laid to rest. Whenever I walk past the tombstones and read the names, memories of stories told about them always come to mind. I believe the souls of these relatives and friends have been transcended elsewhere, however they are not forgotten.

I sometimes think about the cemetery scene from Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, where the transient spirits of former friends and neighbors who were already interred there gathered and were talking about their old friend that was being interred and whose spirit would soon be joining them. I often wonder what impressions the resident spirits here might have to say as people come and go and new souls arrive periodically.

Our cemetery is situated in the country away from the hustle-bustle of city life. There is a wooded area on its east side where we have found wild mushroom and poke greens in the early spring. There are open fields on the north and south sides where cattle graze and field mice try to hide from the red-tailed hawk that soars overhead. There are woods on the east and a country lane on the west. It is located a mile or two west of the Missouri/Kansas state line in Cherokee County, Kansas. The community where it is located is Union Chapel. There are several roads that will get you to it. We usually take the Belle Center road west to the State Line road. Go north to the first road west and take it to the dead end, then turn north again on the Empire Road. At that point you will see a rock barn on a farm there. This barn has been a landmark for as long as I can remember. The Empire Road goes past the old Union Chapel School north for several miles to a bridge that crosses Spring River. However, before that we turn off west again at the first road past the school. It comes to a dead end in about a mile. There we turn right (north) on the country lane leading to the cemetery about a quarter mile down on the right.

The Union Chapel School, District #18, established around 1878, has been deserted for several years, but the spirits of school days past still seem to linger in the remains of the white clapboard building standing beside the road. The school bell and sign that hung over the entrance are now in the Galena Mining and Historic Museum. There isn't much traffic on these roads now to disturb the silence that falls over this community. About the only prominent place left in this community, besides the houses of the residents, is the cemetery.

As we pull into the parking lot of the cemetery we hear a dog barking at the heels of Jack Boyes's cows as they walk slowly through the pasture on the south heading toward the barn. It's about milking time and the cows will soon be bedding down for the night. I see the yellow breast of a meadowlark sitting on the fence along the lane as it warbles to its mate. Somewhere in the distance the farmer calls "Sooie" to his pigs at feeding time. A feeling of melancholy settles over me as the evening shadows appear in the western sky.

Then I look up and see the new wrought-iron sign that Janie and Steve Smith had made and installed at the entrance. It seems to reaffirm the fact that there are people who do care about this place of interment and their loved ones buried here. Then I feel hope for the future generations who will come here looking for their roots.

This acre of land was established as a cemetery when Marcellus Leslie and John Isley recorded the deed in 1899. However, there were graves on it before that date. The oldest date on a tombstone is for Joseph Hardwick, son of G.J. and F. P., born Sept 12, 1867, died Nov 29, 1867. There are also two or three tombstones for infants on the Howell lots that have dates in the early 1870's. The first Leslie family members were buried here in 1889 I believe. Some descendents of Hiram and Rachel (Drane) Leslie still bury family members here.

Over the years, there have been some changes to the cemetery, and I think about a time when this parking lot did not exist. Everyone parked in the lane then, and when there was a burial here, the cars would line up all the way down to the next crossroads south of the cemetery. That was very inconvenient for the people living north of the cemetery and it eventually lead to an altercation between them and my Aunt Jonetta Jones. Her father, John Davis, died July 13, 1949 and was buried beside his son on lot #28. Aunt Jonetta often brought her mother, Etta Davis, out here to visit his grave. One day, the woman down the lane complained about them blocking the road; words were exchanged, and it didn't take long for the hair pulling begin. After that incident, Aunt Jonetta had her father's remains removed and transferred to the Oak Hill Cemetery in Empire, KS, an old mining community closer to Galena where they lived. When Aunt Willie (Smith) McMurdo died in 1961, Uncle Bruce, Jonetta's husband, got the Sheriff to come out to the cemetery during the burial so there wouldn't be any more trouble. Soon after that land was obtained from the Jack Boyes family for the parking lot. The old gate on the west was then closed, and the fence on the south was removed so an entrance could be made there. Also a wooden sign designating the Union Cemetery on it was put up on the southwest corner.

I think it was sometime in the seventies when the county took over the upkeep of all cemeteries in Cherokee, County and created a cemetery board to look after them. At times the county workers have not been very careful of the fragile old tombstones, and many broken pieces have been found here and there. What a shame for families when stones are broken and vandalized. It seems to happening a lot these days.

However, our cemetery looks so much better now than it did back in the nineteen forties and fifties. At that time each family took care of keeping their own family lots cleaned off. Emma (Leslie) McIntire would arrange for family members to meet at the Union Chapel School at noon and bring a covered dish for a meal together before the workday at the cemetery began. Her kids had gone to school there and Uncle Oliver had been a member of the school board from 1909 to 1915 when they lived in the Union Chapel District.

Back in those days each family took care of their own lot; some even put black ornamental iron fences around them. However, there was an area out in the middle of the cemetery where sumac bushes, blackberry vines, and poison ivy grew taller than I was. I guess the families that owned those lots weren't around to take care of them.

One time, while our family was busy cutting grass on the Leslie lots, my brother and I ventured into the brambles of the unkempt lots. We read the names and dates of the tombstones. We found a stone for Louis Messer - Company E., Fifteenth Regiment, Missouri Volunteer Calvary (Civil War vet), and Dillard H. Rawlings, and V.R. Hancock, 2nd Div., KS Btry (also Civil War Veterans). We imagined that the cemetery had been a battlefield during the Civil War.

Antidotal Stories

I remember another time when the weeds were waist high on mama's lot, and she walked through the old gate with a sickle in her hand.

Mama swung the sickle back and forth in front of her to make a path to a nearby tombstone. Then she sickled off the growth of weeds around the stone and over the mound of dirt where the remains of her mother lay. Mama was only seven years old when her mother, Emma died of consumption. Mama had been adopted by her Aunt Etta and Uncle John Davis before her mother's death. Her step father, Ben Altizer, had to leave soon after the funeral to serve in World War I.

The lot south of the Altizer lot was where Etta and John Davis had buried their son, Joseph in 1909. Both lots had cement blocks laid up around them and mama sickled the weeds off both of these graves too.

"You can get out of the car now," Mama called as she knelt down and traced her finger along the carved name on a small marker on the lot in front of the one Joe Davis' tombstone was on. When I got near her, she stood up and gazed at the carving of two clasped hands.

Then she took out a piece of paper and a map from her pocket, studied them a minute, and said, "This is lot # 28 and that is the badly weathered tombstone of Samuel Leslie (son of Hiram and Rachel). He was killed by a premature explosion while working in a mine southwest of Joplin, Mo. His wife was pregnant with their first child at the time of the accident, August 31, 1889. She gave birth to a son Jan.21, 1890 and named him Elzie S. Leslie. He died March 1, 1890 and they buried him next to his father on the north side. On the south side of Samuel's grave is the tombstone of his father, Hiram Leslie born Feb. 6, 1832, died Sept. 15, 1890. He was a farmer and a carpenter. It was told that he said a good carpenter never left the imprint of his hammer on a board. Next to him on the south is the gravestone of Rachel C. Leslie, born Nov. 29,1837, died Jan. 14, 1925. She was born in Hardin County KY the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Crume) Drane. When Rachel lived on the farm west of the cemetery her daughter, Mary Margaret Smith, would take her children there to visit their grandma. In the evening after the chores were done they would all walk across the field to the cemetery. They would pick wild flowers, sing songs, play games, and tell stories in the cemetery until the sun went down.

"Mary Margaret had buried her son there in 1897 and her husband, Merrit Wilburn Smith in 1898. His body was found on a ledge in a mine shaft near the streetcar line on thirteenth street in Blendville where the family lived. Some said he fell in accidentally because he was drunk. Others thought it was the result of a longstanding feud that came about during the old Civil War days between the Smiths and Webb families.

"That Smith tombstone on lot #30 has inscriptions on all four sides. The side facing south has "Merrit Edmon, the son"; the east side has "Merritt, the father"; the west side has "Mary Margaret, the mother", who died on Christmas Eve 1902. The side facing north has "Nellie, a daughter". Nellie had been crippled several years before she died at age 18 in 1901. Another daughter, Mary Anne died in 1904. She has a separate stone next to the communal stone on the south. She was only sixteen when she died. My mother, Emma Smith Altizer, was only 25 years old. She was the youngest of Mary Margaret's girls. The oldest girls, Etta and Lilly were married, and so they each took two of the younger girls to raise.

"Over here is a big tall tombstone that looks like a tree stump. It marks the grave of Uncle Theo. He was a policeman in Joplin, and was killed by a Negro man. When the Negro was caught and taken to jail, a mob broke him out and hanged him. The tree stump or cut tree symbolizes a life cut short. The Woodsmen of the World organization also uses this type of tombstone. Theophilus Leslie belonged to that organization and his life was cut short in 1903 at the age of 35. He left a wife and two sons."

The Leslie family came from Breckinridge County, KY to Cherokee County KS. by covered wagon after the Civil War. Legend has it that they had a baby that died and was buried somewhere along the way. They first settled on a farm near Baxter Springs, KS. According to the 1875 Farm Census of Cherokee County, KS, Town of Lowell, they had four children listed as being born in KY. They were M.A. (Marcellus Anthony), age 17; Mary, age 14; P.T. (Peter Thomas), age 13; and S.S. (Samuel) age 9. The next three children were born in KS. They were T.C. (Theophilus), age 7; S.C. (Sarah Catherine), age 5; and M.E. (Martha Emily), age 1. Grandma Davis said there were three that died in infancy- Johnie, Benny, and Annie. I guess Johnie was the one that died on the way to KS because she said that Annie and Bennie are buried in unmarked graves in the cemetery near the grave of Blanch Leslie, who has a marker on lot #59. Her tombstone reads, "Blance O., daughter of P.T. and Sarah Leslie, born Apr. 10, 1889, died Apr. 28, 1889.

The Hiram Leslie family moved from Baxter Springs to a farm west of the cemetery down near the Spring River. After Hiram fell from the roof of a building and died, Marcellus and Rachel farmed the land until about 1904. Then Rachel left with her son (Marcellus) to homestead land in Texas. She raised a special crop of goober peas (peanuts) in 1917. She sold the crop and bought a train ticket to come back for a visit with her family in Kansas and Missouri. Rachel died in Higgins, TX, and her body was brought back for burial at the Union Cemetery beside her husband, Hiram.

Marcellus Leslie also died in Higgins, Texas, in 1927. His son and x- wife lived in California at the time. His son, Thomas Elwood Leslie, went to Higgins, TX for the funeral. While he was there he went swimming in the Wolf River and drowned just two days after his father's death.

Mama pointed to Rachel Leslie's tombstone and said, "I was five or six years old when she came from Texas and they had a family reunion at Great Aunt Emma's house in Belle Center. I have some pictures that were taken that day. I remember playing with a pretty little girl cousin named Catherine Edwards. Her mother was Dessie (Leslie) Edwards. I used to see Dessie out here on Memorial Day decorating the family graves."

Dessie's father was Peter Leslie (son of Hiram and Rachel). He doesn't have a tombstone now, and maybe he never did. Some stones have been destroyed over the years. He lived with his wife Sarah and several children in a house southwest of the cemetery. Peter was a miner and died of miner's consumption April 28, 1905. We feel sure he is buried on lot # 30 with his wife Sarah. She was remarried, so the stone reads Sarah Leslie McPeak.

The other tombstones on lot #30 are: Dessa Edwards, b. 1892, d. 1929; Eddie Edwards, b. & d. Sept 11, 1910; Ethel Edwards, b. Mar 16, 1909, d. June 5, 1909; Edmond "Judd" Edwards, b. 1887, d. 1941. Also Frank, son of P.T. and Sarah Leslie, b. June 8, 1891, d. Mar 5, 1899 is buried on that lot.

Another child of Hiram and Rachel Leslie was Sarah Catherine, who married Charles D. Sawyer. They bought lot #25 and buried two babies there before they moved to Oklahoma about 1902. Their oldest daughter, Winford Sawyer, bought lot #7. The Sawyer family moved on from Oklahoma to Higgins, Texas where Aunt Kate (Sarah Catherine) was killed by a tornado in 1947. Uncle Charlie was injured but survived for two more years. They were both buried in Shattuck, Texas. So the lots had several open spaces. Mama (Birdie Kieslich Bloyed) contacted their only living child in 1995. Her name was Faye Queen, and she transferred the ownership of lots #7 and #25 to Birdie Bloyed and her heirs.

The youngest daughter of Hiram and Rachel Leslie was Martha Emily. She married Thomas Oliver McIntire December 8th, 1894. Great, great Aunt Emmy is buried on lot #44 along with her husband and three sons. We usually always saw her at the cemetery on Decoration Day. Her home was in Baxter Springs, Kansas at the time. I remember her big smile, infectious laugh, and how fast she talked to everyone. Aunt Emmy died on April 4, 1967 at 95 years of age. There is a big cedar tree that shades the McIntire lot. Aunt Emmy's son, James Ruea, died at age two in 1898. His tombstone has a little lamb on top, which is the symbol of innocence, used sometimes on the tombstones of children in the 1890's.

On the Leslie lot #28, I have two more aunts buried, Aunt Willie and Aunt Lilly. When I was a kid they lived together at 1102 Monroe Street in Joplin, Missouri. They were sisters to my grandmother, so they are actually great aunts and they were great ladies. Aunt Lillie (Smith) Hill lived to be 99 years of age. She married Thomas Ion Hill on March 28, 1900, and they had five children. Their daughter, Rachel Hill, also has a tombstone on lot #28 beside her mother. Rachel Hill got tuberculosis and they took her to New Mexico for treatment where she died. A friend out there gave her some red silk pajamas that she was buried in. She was just twenty years old and never married.

Aunt Willie (Smith) Starks, McMurdo married Theodore Starks and had two children by him. Theodore had an affair with the friend and next door neighbor, Ocie Payne. Ocie had a son, Willie Payne. According to Mama, Willie Payne is buried on lot #14 in the southwest corner, which would be gravespace #1. After Theodore Starks and Aunt Willie divorced, he married Ocie Payne and Willie became the common law wife of John McMurdo. When John died she buried him on the Altizer lot #26 where my dad, Carl Kieslich, is now buried. John's two sisters had his body dug up by Huss and Soc Sulllenger and moved to another cemetery.

Now I want to tell you about Aunt Essie (Smith) McBride, the daughter of Merrit W. and Mary M. (Leslie) Smith. She lived to be 105 years old. She is buried on lot #11 along with her husband, Burt; her son, Fred; and grandson, Gary McBride. Gary was living in a trailer house on Black Cat Road near Belle Center, Missouri. The trailer house caught fire and he died of smoke inhalation. He is buried on gravespace #6 at his "Grans" feet where he wanted to be. The most recent gravestone on the lot is for Bonnie and Jerry McBride's daughter, Jacqueline. She had kidney problems when she was a young girl, and had to do dialysis and kidney transplants for several years.

Carl Kieslich bought the east half of lot #12 from Walter Ritchie in 1945 when Carl's mother, Eva Kieslich, died in Arizona. He had her body shipped back for a funeral and burial here on gravespace #6. Eva's mother, Mary Humphrey, who lived in Galena, Kansas is buried in gravespace #5.

No one is buried on spaces seven and eight. The west half of Lot #12 belongs to the Sullenger family. There is a double tombstone for Joseph and his wife, Mary Ann Sullenger, on gravespaces #3 & #4. Their unmarried daughter, Carrie, is buried on gravespace #2 and a married daughter, Joan Phillips, in gravespace #1.
Clifford (Cedar) Starchman was a grandson of Joseph and Mary Ann Sullenger. He married my sister, Betty Jean Kieslich, on April 27, 1945. He is buried on lot #13 along with his grandson, Jeremy Doty. Cedar was an avid fox and coon hunter. His tombstone has a sculpture of a hound dog treeing a coon on it. On Jeremy's tombstone is an encapsulated picture of him. Mama states that she bought this lot in April, 1958 when Dad died. In May, 1973 Mama gave lot #13 and the two vacant spaces on lot #12 to her daughter, Betty Jean Starchman.

My dad, Carl Kieslich, died April 21, 1958. I remember the trip from the old rock church down Central City Road to Belle Center past the remains of the old gas station where Dad worked when he and Mama got married and on down the road through Belleville. There was a big lilac bush in full bloom by the road that went down to the Ku Klux Klan cave where dad said he and his brother, Fred would go when they played hookie from school. Further on down the road we turned south where he liked to camp in the summertime at the place where Turkey Creek runs into the Spring River just past the Missouri/Kansas state line. We traveled south on the Empire Road to the first road and turned right where we drove west passed Jack Boyes's house. I remember watching my brother-in-law, Cedar, pitching baseball games in the field there. At the end of that road we turned right again down the lane north to the cemetery. We were all very quiet in the fancy limousine except for a sob now and then. The hearse stopped at the old gate and the family cars stopped behind it all the way down the lane south toward Boston Mill Road. The tent and chairs were set up around the open gravesite. Pallbearers carried the casket to the opening, as people walked slowly from their cars and gathered around. The preacher said final words, and the casket was lowered. Dad was only 48 years old. My children would never know him.

John Bloyed, my dad's friend, would marry Mama and become a grandfather for them. They called him "Pappy John". We buried him there too several years later on a cold day in December, 1995. Mama was also buried there on an even colder day in November, 2005. Her grave is space #3 on lot number #26 between Dad and Pappy John, the two men she loved so much.

Lot #5 was sold to Howard McBride, the brother to Bert McBride, who is buried on lot #11. Howard's wife, Hazel, died June 16, 1933 at the age of 32. Bert McBride and Carl Kieslich dug the grave for the burial, as it was the custom in those days for family and friends to do. After the funeral procession left, they lowered the casket. It was a hot day; Bert and Carl had been drinking and didn't realize the casket was turned backwards until it was down six feet. Hazel's body was facing west instead of east like it should have been. However, they decided it was too hot and too much work to bring the casket up and turn it around, so they covered it up like it was. Mama said the grave was dug on the southeast corner of a lot #5 (on gravespace #5) according to the way we have numbered the spaces on lots.

I grew up believing that the cemetery was on my great-great grandparent's (Hiram and Rachel Leslie) farm. Marcellus Leslie (son of Hiram and Rachel) and John Isley; acting as trustees of the Union Chapel Cemetery, purchased the land from Herman Ricthie for twenty-five dollars on Oct. 21, 1899. The deed is recorded in Columbus, KS at the Cherokee County Courthouse, book #63, page 569. Because the land had belonged to Herman Ritchie, people had always called it the Ritchie Cemetery.

The Leslie and Isley families own several lots according to the cemetery map that was in Walter Ritchie's possession Mar. 26, 1959. Jonetta Jones borrowed the map, took it to Herreld's Studio in Galena KS where she had a picture made of it. Walter Ritchie apparently wrote in the names of people he sold lots to, but not who was buried there. We don't know if this information was ever available. The lots are numbered one to eighty-one beginning in the northeast corner and the rows zig-zag back and forth from east to west, then west to east and each lot had spaces for eight graves. Sometime after 1959 the records were transferred to Jack Boyes. They were destroyed in his house when it burned.

When I became interested in the Leslie family history and the cemetery, my husband, John Kekec, made a more readable map" from Jenetta Jones' photocopy of a picture she had taken of the original Walter Ritchie map. We wanted to make a better record of the people buried there. So with camera, chalk, notepad, husband, sister, and Mama we made a trip to the cemetery with the photocopied map in hand. We soon became discouraged, confused, and weary from the immensity of the task. Almost every time my husband and I would make trips to the Joplin/Galena area, we would go back to the cemetery and try again. John took cement and repaired some broken stones on one occasion. Each trip we would always take a few more pictures and Mama would tell me more stories.

We have made trips to the cemetery in the springtime when the temperature was mild; trees were budding, wild flowers blooming, and grass greening up around the countryside. Also in the summer when the sun was at high noon and the heat was just too intense to stay out among the tombstones for very long; we only did what we could get done in a short time. On those trips it didn't seem right to spend a lot of time at the cemetery when it could be better spent with the living. One fall day in 1998 an odd thing happened as we were on our way to the cemetery. We saw a house on fire southwest of the intersection of the cemetery lane with Boston Mill road. We had been wondering where the Hiram Leslie family lived out there, so we stopped and asked a man watching the abandoned house while it was burning. His name was Claude Mallet and he said that the old Leslie homeplace was back in the wooded area north of the burning house. Also, he said that their son, Peter Leslie, had built a two story house across the road south of the burning house for his family. Both home places had been gone for a long time.

Of course we have been to the cemetery for funerals in the fall and winter when the cold north wind seemed to cut right through us and the thought of putting a family member in the cold ground chilled us to the bone. Death doesn't wait for a nice day; whatever the weather might be, the funeral goes on as planned.

It seems like facts and written records for our cemetery are hard to come by. As I stated earlier, the old original records of Walter Ritchie were destroyed in a house fire and the later ones were lost too. The man at the Columbus Courthouse who kept the records took them home. Then, after he hanged himself, the family disposed of them not knowing they were important.

In May, 1963, Colleen Belk, from the Joplin Historical Society, canvassed the tombstones with the help of Betty (Kieslich, Starchman, Lett). They started recording the names and dates at the southwest corner with the Herman Ritchie tombstone, which is on lot #64. Then they proceeded north along the lane to lot #9; then they went back to the parking lot and started the second row with Wm. Isley on lot #62, and continued north to lot #8. Each time they started a new row at the south end and went north. Her records ended in the northeast corner on lot #1, which is the Lizzie Drane lot.

Alvin "Buck" Drane and his wife Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" Drane are buried on lot #1 in the northeast corner of the cemetery. Lizzie's maiden name was McHalland, and Robert Leech was distantly related to her. Robert Leach's stepfather was a McHalland and he was known as Matt McHalland. Robert and Myrtle Leach have a double tombstone on lot #1. Buck and Lizzie Drane lived in the Belleville community and were friends of Cedar and Betty (Kieslich) Starchman. Buck was blind, but he liked to listen to foxhounds with Cedar and other hunters in the Missouri/Kansas area. He lived with Cedar and Betty the last few years of his life. He died in 1967 at the age of 94. Betty remembers taking Buck to 5th and McKinley in Chitwood to visit three of Lizzie's nieces. They were Letha, Beulah, and Goldie, whose married name was Sligar and she lived in Wichita KS at that time. Their mother, Lizzie's sister, was Anna Slater.

A tombstone on lot #59 is for Molly Drane, the wife of James Drane, who was the brother of Rachel (Drane) Leslie. Grandma Davis said that Molly had a baby that died at the same time as Molly and they buried Molly with the baby in her arms. Buck Drane, son of James and Molly Drane, was eight years old when his mother died. He got his first suit of clothes from Roney's Department Store in Carl Junction, Mo. for the funeral. When he came out of the store a man told him how nice it looked. Buck said, "I wouldn't have got it except my mother died." In later years Buck put the tombstone for his mother's grave on lot #59. He guessed at the date of her death and maybe the location of her grave.

There are a lot of cemeteries across this big country of ours. Some are large well- kept places and others are small and rustic; some almost abandoned. Some of them are especially for veterans with their neat rows of white crosses or gravestones stretching almost to the horizon. Some have mausoleums above the ground, like in New Orleans where the water table is so high that they can't put their remains into the ground. Those in the cities are usually surrounded by adjacent homes and businesses. Quite often cemeteries spring up next to the local community churches, especially in rural areas. In pioneer days families buried their family members on a designated spot on the land which they had homesteaded, and the deceased were taken to their burial sites in the family's horse and wagon.

Families kept more careful records then of these deceased family members, often in the family Bible. These are the little graveyards that few people know about scattered around the countryside. Many become overgrown and unknown to people passing by and sometimes new owners of the land don't want a burial site on their land, so the stones were removed and the land returned to farming.

That was the case of John Smith, a Civil War veteran and his wife Martha. Jonetta Jones researched the Smith family as far back as the revolutionary war. John Smith had lived in Diamond, Missouri when the war began. He and other members of his family went to Fort Scott, Kansas to join the Union Army there. They were put upon by Indians along the way, and the trunk with the family Bible taken from them. The Bible was recovered later along the road and remained in the possession of the Smith family in Girard, KS. After the war ended, John Smith and his brother James B. Smith settled on a farm near Girard where they were buried when they died. When Jonetta went to the farm looking for graves, they were not there. Jonetta had gotten a monument from the war department to mark the grave, but the owners would not let her put it on their land. So Jonetta put the stone on a lot belonging to her Uncle Sim Davis in the Galena cemetery. She didn't want the marker at the Union Cemetery because of the feud with the lady down the lane north of the cemetery. Jonetta and I believe that a sister of John Smith, Margaret Buchanan, is buried at the cemetery on the George Washington Carver Memorial grounds in Diamond, Missouri. Jonetta and Bruce, visited quite a few cemeteries in the four-state area on her genealogy searches over the years.

My husband and I have also visited a few of the cemeteries in the area in hopes of finding the exact place of interment for his grandfather, Ferdinand Kekec, who died in 1906. Back then even the larger well maintained city cemeteries, like Mount Olive in Pittsburg, Kansas, didn't keep good records of the people buried there. There is no tombstone for him, probably because he left a young pregnant wife with two small children, and with no money to purchase one. He had come from Austria to work in the area mines around 1890. We have often wished that someone somewhere had a written record or recollection of his grave site. Therefore, I have made an effort to record grave sites in the Union Cemetery that we know about, but that are without tombstones on them at this time.

A couple of these unmarked graves are the spaces #3 & #4 on lot #1. Myrtle Leech's daughter told us that Matt Malhalland's mother and baby were buried there. We don't know their names or their death dates. We did find the death date and record of Hazel McBride's burial in the funeral home records kept at the Galena Historical society. For a small town they have a lot of records and friendly members willing to help people. Back in 1995 a man from the state of Washington stopped there looking for records of his ancestor. His name was Gary Cooper (not the actor) and his great grandmother was May Leslie, the daughter of Peter and Sarah Leslie. One of the ladies at the historical society there put him in touch with Mama. She arranged to meet him at the cemetery along with her daughter, Betty and granddaughter, Janie so he could decorate the grave of his great great grandparents. May Leslie Cooper and her husband, William Cooper had left the area in 1900 to find work out west. The Leslie family that remained in the Galena area had lost contact with them over this time. Now they keep in touch with Christmas cards each year.

The cemetery also brought Mama back in touch with Catherine Edwards one Memorial Day , or Decoration Day as my family called it. Catherine (Edwards) Carlin came to decorate her mother and father's graves, Dessie and Judd Edwards. It had been years since the reunion in 1917 when Mama and Catherine played together, but they still knew they were family when they saw each other.

Decoration Day seemed to be a more important holiday back then when I was a kid. I remember how my dad would locate a field of wild daisies and take the family out to pick bouquets of them to take to the cemetery. Everyone put their bouquets in coffee cans or fruit jars with water before they placed them on the graves. Grandma Davis had a lot of rose bushes in her yard, which provided flowers for several nice bouquets that she used for Decoration Day. Mrs. Jones, Bruce's mother had all kinds of flowers that she sold Mama for bouquets. It was a must to take flowers to decorate the graves of our family members at the Union Cemetery. It wasn't a quick trip there either; time was spent reminiscing and visiting with others at the cemetery.

Decoration Day originated with the practice of southern women strewing wild flowers on the graves of their dead soldiers after the Civil War. But it was in 1868 when May 30th was designated as the day Union soldier's graves should be decorated. Since then the veterans of all wars have been honored. The VFW and other organizations place small flags on the graves of veterans in modern times. I have never seen it done at the Union Cemetery however, although there are veterans of different wars buried there. A new stone for a veteran showed up in 2002. He probably was a Spanish American War veteran.

On a visit to the cemetery in April, we noticed two mortuary markers on lot # 50, but no sign of new graves. Upon our next visit there were veteran's tombstones on these graves of James M. Sligar, Pvt Company A, 31st Hq Btn. The other one was for Delana Price Sligar. The old map showed the graves were there previously, but no name of the interred or owners. These stones are close to Molly Drane's tombstone. Lizzie Drane had a niece, Goldie Sligar who might have been related in some way.

The other known veterans in the cemetery are: Blanche McKibbens on lot #77, Pvt at base hospital #99; Louis Messer, Company E, Missouri Vol Cav; Dillard H. Rawlings who has a GAR stone which I believe means he is a veteran likely having served in the Civil War; V.R. Hancock of the 2nd KS Btry; and Jacob Archie Wolfe, KS Pvt. 40 Spruce Sq.

The Smith family on lot #3 were friends and neighbors to the Kieslich family in Belle Center. They lived over on the Black Cat Road. Back in the forties when most other folks were driving cars, Mr. and Mrs. Smith drove their horse and buggy to town. Their son, Bill, was good friends with Birdie's son, Carl. The Smith daughter, Lou Ella, was the same age as my sister, Betty Jean. Lou Ella was just 38 when she was killed in a car accident in 1964. Mr. John Wm. Smith Sr. had died in 1959. The family got a double tombstone and put the mother's name, Josie, on it. She went to live with a daughter in another state where she died. We don't believe she was buried in the Union Cemetery. Bill Smith was found dead in his apartment in Webb City in 1975. He has statues of two angels, one on each side of his tombstone.

On lot #9, space #1 is the grave of Ollie (Fats) Betterton who was a neighbor to Birdie and Carl Kieslich at 1102 Roosevelt Street in Joplin, Missouri. Birdie was a young wife and mother at the time. Mrs. Batterton had gone to Wichita to look after their daughter when Mr. Betterton got sick, so Mom took him soup and tried to doctor him. However, he got worse and she was with him when he hemorrhaged to death on September 03, 1931. The Bettertons had three sons, and one daughter. One son that Mama remembers was named Harold Lloyd Betterton. Mrs. Betterton didn't have money to take care of Ollie's burial so Birdie bought the lot and Carl dug the grave.

Another friend of Mama's was Ola Patty buried on lot # 37 with her husband, Thomas Patty. Ola and her daughters attended Dow Boo's church in Smelter Hill where Mama was a member. They often sang and played special music along with their neighbors, the Cook family. Both of these families lived about a mile south of the cemetery. Mrs. Patty's maiden name was Phillips according to the obituary given at the time of the daughter's, Ruth David's, death.

The interment list included herein has about 225 names on it, but there are only 189 names recorded on gravesites. I am sorry to say that, because it was not possible to determine a tombstone's location, I had no way of knowing which gravesite the grave was on. Also some tombstones may have been destroyed, and I feel sure some of the graves were not ever recorded. The Walter Ritchie map had a rectangle symbol designating known graves on some of the lots, but he apparently didn't have the names. I hope this record can become more complete when new information is forthcoming.

I hope these records and the stories Mama told me will be of value to people. I also want to apologize for mistakes and any omissions or misinformation contained herein.

When Mama died and we were going to the visitation at the funeral home, a double rainbow appeared in the sky. The rainbow seemed to me to be a sign that Mama's spirit had "crossed over the bar to meet her God face to face", as the poem by Tennyson goes. This poem written by the Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1899 is entitled, Crossing the Bar, which he used to close all editions of his poetry works. And, since it was also a favorite of my Dad's, it seems fitting that I close with it too.

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be nomoaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

References

1. Deed Book #63, p. #369, Cherokee Cty Courthouse, Columbus KS
2. Photocopy of Walter Ritchie's plot map dated Mar 26, 1959.
3. Colleen Belk's canvass of Union Cemetary tombstones, May 15, 1963.
4. Alphebetical list of tombstones dated Nov, 1970.
5. Galena Historical Society Funeral home records.
6. Lawmen and Outlaws, 116 Years in Joplin History by Jim Hounschell.
7. Deposition of Birdie (Kieslich) Bloyed, Jonetta Jones, and others.