Pioneer Cemetery

Pioneer Grave Begins Cemetery
by Elnora J. Robey

Tradition holds that once upon a time when Iowa was young a migrating family camped on a sandy slope south of the Oneota near its confluence with the Mississippi. A child of the family who was ill died in that lonely encampment.

That father, it is said, asked the nearby settler for permission to bury the child on his land. Eventually another person died in the new settlement on what began to be called Sand Cove and was buried with due rites. Others followed. Adults and children were laid to rest beside "the immigrant child."

Sometime, someone began marking the graves by setting a large flat stone on edge at either end, leaving a seven or eight inch triangle of rock showing above the earth. Some of the dead were given monuments, slender tower-shaped structures of granite or the flat white gravestones that abound in northeastern Iowa, stones that have room for a carved design, names and dates, and a poem or Bible verse.

For as long as people can recall, the cemetery has been isolated, and for at least 50 years it has been a wilderness of trees and bushes, with only remnants of a fence around it. When the ground was wet, cattle trampled the rocks into the earth and some of the monuments were broken.

It seems not to have been connected with the church, although eventually a Sunday school was started on the Cove. Eddie Colsch, who grew up nearby and who has been looking into the area's history, found reference to the Sunday school in an 1872 paper. When he was a boy, almost 50 years ago, there was an unused well and a tree on the spot where the church had stood about a mile from the cemetery. Situated in a community where many of the people are Roman Catholic, the cemetery seems to have been an ecumenical venture and continues to be.

When Colsch, who said he has wanted to do something about that cemetery since he was a boy, got at it in earnest this year, his right-hand man was Kenneth Moore, grandson of a pioneer woman who in April, 1859, walked 100 miles from the Cove to Osage. She made the journey for a land patent when her husband couldn't because he was injured while logging to earn needed cash.

Peter Colsch, Eddie's cousin, who now owns "the McDonald farm" where the cemetery is located, cooperated with the project. A pile of brush on each side of the cemetery and scores of little and bigger stumps indicate how much work it was. Great lilacs had abounded, along with cedar, oak, bushes and weeds. The volunteers left one attractive little cedar tree in the corner and there are several bigger trees still standing.

Altogether 12 of Colsch's family members helped, with a few members of the local VFW post and some of a softball team he sponsors. The clearing, resetting of stones and fencing took 232 hours, with Colsch spending 67 and Moore spending 56. The VFW donated $100 for materials.

Some headstones tell a story, even if one does not know more than the information they give. Three little square markers bear the name Cooper, with birth and death dates indicating the graves contain children. Another monument has the family name McDonald and the name of a child on each of three sides.

One small square of granite has only "In Memory of Mr. and Mrs. Bowers," as though friends marked their graves. Moore added, "Well driller and seamstress." He said his father, Con, had related how Charlie Bowers, unhappy at how fast his rough was wearing out his clothes, made himself pants out of wheat sacks.

Most of the names no longer are found in this area. There are several members of the Milks family buried in Sand Cove. The grave of Joe Milks has a two-railed fence of iron pipe. For each corner there is a cup-like ornament and an iron dove will hover where diagonal iron straps cross in the center when Colsch gets it repaired. Moore recalls seeing birds drinking from the cups when he was a child.

Another stone that has interest is that of Caroline, the wife of Leander Ferris. Ferris owned the 80 acres on which the cemetery is located, having come to the Cove in 1858. He became a justice of the peace in 1864. Elizabeth Gordon and William Bennett were married by him in 1871, according to Colsch's research. Francis, their son who died in 1874 at the age of two, according to his tombstone, was probably their firstborn.

A monument that always seemed strange to Colsch lost some of its mystery when he removed a rock from its top and brushed away dirt and moss in preparation for its being photographed. The front merely has "McEwwan - Born in Scotland - Died at Lansing, Iowa, Aug 19, 1867. Aged 71 years." Colsch discovered the name "Isabel" in shallow carving on the top surface.

A desire to know who is buried in those other graves has given Colsch a research project, sending him to old newspaper files, census records, courthouse records, school records, old diaries, libraries and octogenarians.

Besides the 26 named graves, and a total of 55 marked graves, he has discovered there are at least 14 others, making a total of 69. Of many, there is no trace on the surface. In fact, there is nothing but the two men's memories to show the spot of the most recent burial, that of John Sadd, 84, who was buried beside other members of his family in January, 1966.

The words on the McDonald monument speak for all those in Sand Cove cemetery

"Forget us not since death has closed
Our Eyelids in their last repose
And when the murmuring breeze shall wave
The grass upon our little graves
O then whate'er my age or lot
May be, dear friends, forget us not."

~*~*~

~Cedar Rapids Gazette, November 9, 1975
~transcribed by S. Ferrall