Tombstone Tuesday: Sibley Cemetery at Ft. Osage

The site for Fort Osage was recommended by Lewis and Clark on their early expedition along the Missouri River, and was later built under the direction of Clark at what is now Sibley, Jackson County, Missouri. The cemetery, located a short distance from the Fort, is one of the earliest cemeteries in this part of Missouri. It was used by the Fort for military personnel as well as by the civilians in the community that grew up around it.

The cemetery can be categorized as a "Customary" cemetery. The cemetery was not originally planned or platted. When the need occurred, individuals chose a spot and took care of their own, and as a result, while the graves are oriented eastward and are in family groupings, there is no real order to the cemetery.

As was common for the military, the soldiers were placed in unmarked mass graves. With no stone carvers available in the area, it is likely many of the earliest settler graves were not markedwith a gravestone. Many were likely marked with a stone, wooden cross, tree or other planting, or flowers. Those with some means would have had to mail order a stone, likely from the St. Louis area.

One of my favorite early markers at this cemetery is this marble scroll-top child's marker. The marker sits on a concrete base and features a lamb, a common symbol of innocence and youth usually associated with babies and small children.

Reading the inscription (below) we find this marker is, in fact, for a small child. As settlers new to the area, the surviving parents also felt it important to let those that follow know that this child was born in Utica, Mississippi, only two short years earlier.

Anna,
Daughter of
J.A. & A.E.Hollis
Born at Utica, Miss.
Aug. 5, 1854
Died Aug. 17, 1856

Tour Ft. Osage and Sibley Cemetery on Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/dbkv8r Click Show Info to see captions.

See the Digital Cemetery for more about Sibley Cemetery.

Unusual Monument Year Notation

While indexing the cemeteries in Johnson County, Kansas, I ran into this unusual year notation using E. M. The full inscription reads:

John J. Bartlett
Born Feb 9, E. M. 344
Died May 19, E. M. 409

Bartlett's death notice in the local newspaper indicates he was born in Ohio, a local farmer, born 9 Feb 1844, died 19 May 1909.

Obviously E. M. represents 1500 years but what does it stand for and where does this notation come from?

I would love to know what E. M. means. If you have gravestones with this notation, or if you know what this stands for, please post!

Find Bartlett and more on the Digital Cemetery at http://cemetery.cottonhills.com/

The Cemetery Counts

Indexing cemeteries provides great value to family members and genealogists searching for ancestors for obvious reasons and I’m sure you can all list the benefits. Similarly, studying the cemetery and analyzing the data collected can provide even more valuable insight into the community or family that uses the cemetery. As a cemetery mirrors those it supports, a cemetery study focuses on humanities, and can provide clues to socio-economic, climate, growth, illnesses, plagues, disasters, belief/value systems, history, technology, and linguistics. All of these things together help to provide context around the people and the silent city. This article focuses on a few examples of one phase of a cemetery study.

Running the Numbers

Cemetery transcriptions, or indexes, provide us with a great dataset to work with to begin to understand the growth pattern and longevity of the community, and provides clues to the environment.

Decade and Death Year Charts

One of the first types of analysis I like to perform is focused around the known death years. Using the power of Excel, I total the number of interments by gender for each year of the life of the cemetery, and subtotal by decade, and plot each in separate stacked area or line charts. Because you are limiting the data to just those records with legible death years where gender can be determined, it is important to note both the total number of interments and the sampling size.

The Decade chart provides a clear picture of the overall time-frame and growth trends of the cemetery.

Active cemeteries can extend this trend line to forecast and plan for the future. Cemeterians can gain insight from the bumps and dips in the line. Unusual spikes in the chart can indicate epidemics, war, or other disaster, and the lack of spikes is meaningful as well. A Death Year charts allows you to drill down to understand why a specific decade shows up as a peak or a valley. The decade may be filled with peaks and valleys or may be an elevated fairly flat level.

Age Charts

An Age Chart can also provide an interesting perspective to the population of the cemetery. To develop the data for an Age Chart, first gather the records that have the year of age inscribed on the stone, and then calculate the age in years for the remaining records that have both birth and death years. This will be a smaller subset of records so remember to take note of the sampling size.

I create age groupings like 0-4, 5-9, 10-19, etc. and compare the groups to the population mix in general by plotting the groups in a stacked area chart. This information can help you determine the make-up of the overall population. With some studies it is feasible to plot the age groups over time for an even greater level of context for a given point in time. A spike may show a large number of children, or men of a certain age during war time, or a broad mix, indicating disease or other community-wide disaster.

The Example Study

The charts used as examples in this article, along with detailed charts, are part of a study I conducted of a cemetery located in Johnson Co. Kansas. The cemetery contains a number of illegible, missing, and broken stones, resulting in 56 indexed records, 32 of which were included in this portion of the study.

The charts illustrate the early years of an 1860s pioneer community on the new Kansas prairie and indicate the pattern of a customary cemetery. The early years are marked by a high number of infant deaths, followed by the deaths of young mothers, providing hints to the harshness of life on the prairie. The community peaked in the late 1870s and known interments waned completely by 1890. The cemetery was dormant until a meager resurgence appeared in 1905. Further research revealed that the first formal cemetery association was formed in 1900 to manage sales and care of the cemetery. Burials climbed slowly through the 1910s and declined through 1939. The cemetery was dormant until the last interment in 1960, when the spouse of a prior burial joined her husband at rest.