Pioneer Cemetery Commission preserves history

LaVerna Moser has been one of the nine members of the Iowa County Pioneer Cemetery Commission for 15 years or more.

“It’s very, very rewarding,” Moser said. “I have relatives in almost all of these cemeteries.”

A pioneer cemetery is defined as a cemetery that has had fewer than 12 burials in the last 50 years, Moser said. Iowa County has more than 20 pioneer cemeteries.

The Commission takes care of maintenance and repairs and resets stones as needed to keep the graves accessible to people who visit, especially those researching their family histories.

“There’s many, many people that have never heard of us,” said Moser.

In 1998 the state made a law that counties could set up commissions to take care of the cemeteries, said Moser. Before that, care was left to township trustees.

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“In the beginning they didn’t really give guidelines,” Moser said. The volunteers did what they knew how to do. Some are good with building fences or landscaping. Others repair stones. Other do research.

“And we’re still learning,” Moser said.

Everyone on the commission has different expertise, said Moser. “We have great discussions to further our goals.”

One of the things the Commission does is put up and repair fencing. They have the cemeteries surveyed first because fences aren’t always in the right place, Moser said.

Moser remembers dowsing outside the fence of one pioneer cemetery. Also called witching or divining, grave dowsing is the practice of observing movement of a pointer — often a forked stick — as it passes over human remains. The practice is controversial and considered a pseudoscience by many.

Moser found 26 additional burial sites outside the fence, she said. She checked documents at the county recorder’s office and found that the cemetery property had originally extended outside the fenced area and included the area where she found the additional graves.

“That was an ah-ha moment,” said Moser.

Commission members have many resources with which they research names and dates that can tell them more about the people buried in the cemeteries. Moser has numerous books that she consults.

The book “Iowa County Cemetery Stones and History, 1844-1975” compiled by Pauline Lillie for the Iowa County Historical Society for the bicentennial in 1976, lists names of people buried in county cemeteries.

Moser assumes that Lillie walked row by row through the cemetery and copied information from the stones, but she published the information in alphabetical order, so no one knows where those graves are on the cemetery grounds.

Replacing stones that have been destroyed or removed becomes more difficult if no record exists as to where they belong, Moser said.

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The Commission repairs and replaces stones as it has time and money. Members remove soil and grass from stones that have “gone underground,” either completely or partially. They’ve cleaned stones and painted over the words on weathered stones to make the words legible again.

Moser has a photo of a stone that notes the deaths of parents and their several children. Many of the dates were illegible. Moser researched the family history to find dates of birth and death. Those dates were painted over the etching on the stone after they were verified.

The process took about three years, Moser said.

Having photos of the stones as they used to be helps the Commission repair them or replace them when they are damaged or lost. The website Find a Grave is useful not only because it has photos of grave markers from years ago but also because other stones are visible in the background of many photos — a useful resource in finding locations of graves.

“That’s how we piece some stones together,” said Moser.

The commission pays for mowing of the cemeteries. “We have really good mowing people,” said Moser. They’ll often trim the brush and tell the commission if they see something that needs fixed.

Sometimes the Commission has to have trees that have grown up under or behind grave stones removed in order to restore the markers to their proper places, Moser said.

One project underway is making sure the cemeteries have signs to identify them and lead people to them, said Moser. Many of the cemeteries have been called names other than their official names, and signs have been changed as the Commission learns the original names.

“We’re trying to get the right names on them,” said Moser. Documents Moser came across recently shows that Conn Cemetery was actually founded as Washington Cemetery, and the sign will eventually be changed accordingly.

Some signs will be made bigger to be seen from the road. Other signs will be moved to more accurately reflect the location of the cemetery entrances.

The commission is also trying to get 911 addresses on the cemeteries, Moser said.

The cemetery signs will eventually have QR codes on them to lead visitors to the county’s website were the Pioneer Cemetery Commission will have information about the cemeteries, including directions, photos of stones and histories, said Moser. She keeps a file folder for each cemetery and the data the folders contain will eventually be entered on the county’s website.

Researching families in the cemeteries and taking care of their burial sites takes time and dedication. “It’s a labor of love,” said Moser.

The commission would like to set guidelines for how the cemeteries should be maintained, Moser said. It would like to find a way to take donations for projects. Right now all the money in the commission’s budget reverts back to the county’s general fund if it isn’t spent during the fiscal year. That would include unspent donations.

Moser knows people visit the cemeteries. “I visit them all quite frequently,” said Moser. “I’ve found notes taped to gates.” She once found a note under a brick at a gravesite which thanked the Commission for taking good care of the cemetery.

Anyone who wants to volunteer to help the Commission should contact a member, Moser said.

According to the Iowa County website, Commission members are Suzanne Kabisch, 712-540-8521; Jeff Chapman, 319-330-9179; Scott Hamilton, 319-640-8410; Kevin Heitshusen, 319-330-6304; Seth Mayer, 319-330-0525; Marna Mohr, 319-330-4684; Moser, 319-361-0556; Richard Uhlmann, 319-430-4617 or Bowen Yoder, 319-325-2642.