Partial Listing La Crosse Cemetery, Fountain Green Township, Hancock County, Illinois
Andrews, R. no dates
Elsie, John unmarked grave
Ewing, E. A. died 15-Jan-1853 aged 23 yrs 6 mos 20 dys s/o J. & M. Ewing
Nesbitt, Jane W. died 16-May-1865 aged 43 yrs 1 mo 24 dys w/o James Nesbitt
Nesbitt, William died 05-Dec-1865 aged 11 yrs 2 mos 11 dys s/o J. & J. W. Nesbitt
Patterson, Thomas 1815 1867 h/o Elvira Howell
Wellington, Elizabeth no dates w/o T. Wellington
Wellington, Harrison died 28-Sep-????
Wing, Jonathan L. died 18-Sep-1850 aged 60 yrs
La Crosse Cemetery, Fountain Green Township,
Hancock County, Illinois.
(Sect. 7, T6N, R5W)The La Crosse Cemetery is located some distance back in a farm field east of the north-south County road south out of the ghost town of La Crosse, almost within sight of the town. The town with its abandoned Christian Church building and three or four houses is on the west side of the road or mostly so and is in Pilot Grove Township; the Cemetery because it is on the east side of the road is in Fountain Green Township.
The town was founded in 1868 about the time the T. P. & W. Railroad on which it is located was built. It was in horse and buggy days a place with a depot, a grain elevator, a stock yard, and a number of stores and business establishments (also the church building mentioned). There were “thirty or forty inhabitants” in 1880 at the time of the writing of the 1880 Gregg history of the County. P. 842.
But today there is practically nothing left standing in La Crosse and living men seldom refer to it as a town.
Those who once lived there and called it home are in the La Crosse Cemetery.
The Cemetery undoubtedly was laid out some years before 1868 when the town was founded, and labeled with the name of the town in 1868 or some time after that.
It is like the town practically a ghost cemetery now. Some farmer owning the land threw the monuments into a small nearby creek some years back and added the burying ground to a cultivated field.
The writer of this (Warren L. Van Dine) compiled this list in the early summer of 1966. He was assisted by Mr. Allen Geddes of the prominent Geddes family of Fountain Green Township.
They carried all stones they could find out of the creek bed to the grassy bank. All were marble slabs and broken up. Practically none could be pieced together for a complete inscription. There were many fragments of monuments. Undoubtedly there were quite a few burials and stones here and a lot of the stones were carted off or plowed under in the farm field.
Many citizens of Hancock County of our Twentieth Century have practically no respect for the dead of this County, for the men and women who laid out our towns and farms and gave us as a heritage the beginnings at least of all the refinements and conveniences of civilization which we enjoy here. This in spite of the fact one can be prosecuted under Illinois law for desecration of a cemetery even though they own it.
This has been the fate of the deceased interred here, to be unknown by the big world in life and to be forgotten by even their community in death with their resting places obliterated. Soon both town and cemetery will be but names in the pages of old histories like the 1880 Gregg account.
The following is a copy of a letter from Mrs. Maxine O. M. Hoffman, 6819 Pinehurst Street, Dearborn, Michigan 48126 to Warren L. Van Dine dated March 29, 1968:
Dear Mr. Van Dine:I was in Carthage this past fall and was pleasantly surprised to find the history of the La Crosse Cemetery at the Court House.
I enclose a sketch which has been the only clue that I ever found concerning this cemetery. I remember living with my grandparents and they did not allow my sister and I to go to the “grove”, but we did. The graves were sunken holes and the stones were not upright at this date, which would be around 1913.
There were so many stone-carved baby lambs. As we talk about it now, the fascination of the “lambs” seems to be our most vivid recollection. We don’t recall any names. Our grandparents warned us about the danger of falling in the sunken holes. They always referred to the “grove” and in drawing my sketch I now notice two adjacent farms owned by B. F. Grove and Rebecca Grove.
In an old newspaper on 4-22-1878 was the statement — considerable sickness around and Mrs. Andrews.
On 5-19-1878, La Crosse, in an old newspaper —
On Sunday the 12th, Mrs. Timothy Andrews died. She had been an invalid for almost five years, most of the time confined to her bed. Elder Tandy, of LaHarpe, preached an excellent funeral discourse at the house, after which her remains were taken to the family burial place accompanied by a very large number of friends.
I appreciate your last paragraph of page one. I visited La Crosse, twenty years ago, and no one knew a cemetery ever existed in the area. No one in my family is interested in genealogy, but I am.
Thank you for your concern and your article. I hope to keep on searching and any other burials I find I will note the details.
Marble Slab (Part only left)
Jonathan L. Wing
Died Sept. 18, 1850
Aged 60 ys. ---- 16 dsMarble Slab (Fragment only left)
Jane W., wife of James Nesbitt
Died May 16, 1885
Aged 43 ys 1 m 24 dsMarble Slab (Broken in two)
William Nesbitt, son of J. and J. W. Nesbitt
Died Dec. 5, 1865
Aged 11 ys 2 ms 11 dsMarble Slab (Broken up)
Harrison Wellington
Died Sept. 28, ----Marble Slab (Broken up)
Elizabeth, wife of T. Wellington
DiedMarble Slab (Broken)
E. A. ------, son of J. & M. Ewing
Died Jan. 15, 1853
Aged 23 ys 6 ms 20 dsMarble Slab (Broken up)
R ------ Andrews
DiedUnmarked Grave (or monument lost)
John Elsie
The following quotation is from the manuscript of an address by Mr. Allen Geddes of the prominent Geddes family of Fountain Green Township, given in the Fountain Green hall (the Woodmen Hall) in Fountain Green, Illinois, about Feb. of 1928, on the topic of Fountain Green Township history:
“This part of the State was in the ‘Military Tract’ and veterans of the War of 1812 were given land free. We have buried in this Township five veterans of that war; Lieutenant Col. Francis McConnell, Lieut. James McConnell, Stephen Typer, John Brewer, and John Elsie.”
Mr. Geddes stated in talk with Warren L. Van Dine May 30, 1966 that John Elsie is interred in the La Crosse Cemetery.
