Restoration of Essex Cemetery

Since 1998 when I first visited Essex Cemetery I have spent hundreds of hours working in the cemetery. Working alone the first few years was lonely and discouraging and it has been slower going than I thought it would be initially. The current size of the cemetery is about 1 1/3 acres which is fairly large for one person to restore alone. In 2001 I contacted the Rock Island County Historical Society who put me in touch with Dwight Mohlenbruck, author of numerous books recording deaths in Rock Island County. He knew of Essex Cemetery and had a fondness for it and had previously tried unsuccessfully to get the State of Illinois to use Essex Cemetery for one of their cemetery cleanups. These are organized occasionally to increase public awareness and to encourage counties to fix up their abandoned cemeteries. In April 2002 Dwight Mohlenbruck called to say the State Comptroller's Office would be doing a cleanup of Essex Cemetery in early May, this was perfect timing as I was planning on arriving May 2nd to work in the cemetery. On May 9th a group of volunteers and inmates from the Rock Island County Jail converged on the cemetery with rakes, lawnmowers and trimmers and in a matter of 4 hours transformed it from an overgrown mess into an orderly looking cemetery.

Benjamin Essex descendant Earl Wehmhoener & his wife Alice, who is a prominent Essex Family researcher, came from the Kansas City, Missouri area to help with the cleanup. They invited me to their Essex Family Reunion in August and I attended. Alice asked for donations to put a fence around Essex Cemetery and raised $250. And then Earl & Alice and I came up with the rest of the money and Bill Onken erected a barbed wire fence to keep his cattle out. Slowly the cemetery was changing but I was still all alone cleaning the broken tombstones, recording the inscriptions and photographing them. The most back breaking work was digging up the bases to level them so eventually the broken stones could be mounted in them again, although many will require new bases.

I decided I needed a map of the cemetery showing the location of tombstones, footstones, fieldstones, GAR Civil War markers and then any artifacts or stones I found in the future could be easily recorded. I spent several of my trips measuring and trying to make a graph. With the cemetery being on a hill and none of the stones in neat little rows, I had difficulty measuring the long distances between some of the stones because I couldn't tell if I was properly lined up north to south. Using many tape measures, several 200 ft long, to make base lines to measure from, a compass, surveyor's stakes and twine, I tried to make an accurate graph. I even borrowed a transit from George Carpenter and ran back and forth across the cemetery pounding stakes to mark rows which always seemed off when I got back to the other side, I just couldn't make it work alone, and I needed another person. Many times I was crying in utter frustration because what I wanted to be doing was exploring the cemetery probing for fallen tombstones not measuring.

My luck changed in 2004 when serendipitously I met Jean Wistedt, a genealogist from Drury Township, at the Muscatine Library when I was searching for obituaries. She introduced me to Dave Moeller who did metal detecting and was the Illinois City Postmaster located about 4 miles east of the cemetery. Jean's son graciously spent many hours trimming around graves while Dave brought his mower out and the cemetery was transformed once again allowing Dave to use his metal detector. I had found several of the Civil War GAR markers but Dave was able to find the rest of them using a crude map created by Harry McGreer many years ago showing the approximate location of the Civil War Veterans. All of the GAR markers are broken in 2 or 3 pieces but Dave's metal detector was able to find all the pieces except one. In addition he found 2 metal funeral home markers which were meant to be temporary until a tombstone was erected. They were broken in many pieces and the letters were scattered over a wide area which required some sleuthing to figure out what name they spelled. In addition he found an 1883 Liberty nickel, square nails, barbed wire, and fieldstones that were found when we dug up metal items. Maybe the nails came from crosses placed at the head of graves or a wooden fence might have enclosed a grave plot. We recorded everything Dave found and bagged it with a description of the location. He was finding things faster than I could record them which again emphasized the urgent need for a map of the cemetery.

		Erastus the Billy goat and 2 younger goats were put into the cemetery by Bill Onken with the hope of keeping the grass short. Unfortunately they didn't like grass much; they preferred to climb on the tombstones trying to reach the leaves on the trees and made working in the cemetery a nightmare. Lauri couldn't set her gloves, notepad, pen, hand shovel or most anything down on the ground as the goats would run off with them. One of the "teenagers" as Lauri nicknamed the younger goats even ate the license plate tab off of her car. She took a picture of the goats on her digital camera next to a tombstone just in case the police stopped her and laughed at her explanation of a goat eating her license plate tab. Erastus was a nice goat as Billy goats go and would follow Lauri around occasionally getting aggressive and butting her. She bought vegetables to keep on their good side and when she met Dave Moeller he suggested they chain Erastus up while they were working. It worked like a charm. Later Bill added 6 sheep & a sheep shelter but still they hardly made a dent in the vegetation. Lauri started paying to have it mowed 3 times a year which isn't enough but it helps and all the animals are thankfully gone. Lauri Gartner
	Lauri Gartner has enjoyed the satisfaction of finding, cleaning and repairing various headstones of her relatives and those of others that were buried in the cemetery.
		Dave Moeller not only mowed the weeds, he also introduced "witching" for graves. This process searched for disturbances under the ground. With this technique many stones were found that marked graves.
	An enormous task of surveying Essex Cemetery was undertaken in 2005. Flags were placed to mark known graves, fieldstones and other items that we found.
Volunteers, friends and supporters: Francis Krueger and Tizza Meyer		Keith Irwin and Don Schmidt
	Useful and precious information linking families and finding documents have been a result of these fine ladies, Lauri Gartner, Zaida Thompson and Tizza Meyer.
	May 2006 Phil & Kim St. John pose with Isaac B. Essex's tombstone. Phil's grandfather bought the original Isaac B. Essex farm in Essex Twp, Stark County, Illinois and Phil & Kim now own it. Phil brought his 97 year old mother Frances St. John to visit Essex Cemetery, because of her interest in the history of Stark County, Illinois. Frances was the first person Lauri Gartner met in June 1998 on her trip through Illinois. Lauri had called the Wyoming City offices at lunch time to ask about the location of Sheets Cemetery. Fortunately Frances' nephew, a policeman, was answering the phone during lunch & suggested Lauri call his aunt as she was somewhat of an historian for Stark County. Frances was excited to hear from a direct descendant of Isaac B. Essex who was the first white settler in Stark Co, Illinois and she had lots of information that helped Lauri a lot. Frances was a fascinating person to talk with. She had a zest for life and a keen intellect right up to the end. She passed away in February 2007 and will be greatly missed.	Keith & Elaine Irwin provide service and information for the cemetery.
	Michael Moeller helps mow weeds.	Paulette and Pat help out with surveying.
	Gloria Dunker Hucke has provide information and connections about many families buried in Essex Cemetery.	Various GAR Markers found during cleanup and surveying.