Wright Cemetery Map Wright Cemetery, Fountain Green Township, Hancock County, Illinois
Wright Cemetery is a family burying ground opened by the Hickerson Wright branch of the Wright families of eastern Hancock County in an early pioneer day in western Illinois.
Hickerson Wright according to the 1880 Gregg county history, P. 821, was "born in Virginia, 1791; came to the county in 1833; died, January, 1877."
According to a biographical sketch on P. 839 he was raised in Kentucky. His father died when he was a small boy and he was raised without schooling, without even learning to read and write.
But our county was a promised land for the poor of the older settled States in this pioneer era where men without book learning and cash assets could accumulate wealth in a few years. Its soil was black and all a strong man like Hickerson Wright had to do was to stick a plow into it to tap resources greater than the fabled wealth of the Indies.
Hickerson Wright not only cashed in here but he raised a family of eleven children.
This pioneer and his wife Cynthia are at rest now in a fenced in square enclosure about 20x20 feet on a level spot in a broken field pasture about a half mile northeast of the ghost town of Webster. It is on a farm owned by a Mr. Leslie Corder, a retired monument dealer of Carthage, Illinois and rented to the Robert Tillman family. The farm home on this farm where the Tillmans live is on the blacktop road just east out of Webster.
There are some weeds in addition to the heavy stand of blue grass in the enclosure but the fence is a well built very substantial farm field fence which keeps livestock out. From the looks of this fence it seems likely no farm animal will set foot on the graves of these dead at least in our Twentieth Century, probably not till well into the Twenty-first Century.
The writer of this the forenoon he went to the cemetery to compile this list by copying data from monuments (Dec. 27, 1965) stopped at Mr. Corder’s home on the east brick pavement (East Main Street) in Carthage. Mr. Corder who is now retired from his monument business lives in a fashionable recently built large modern design home where he is enjoying a well earned golden sunset of life.
He stated citizens of the County could be assured that as long as he owned this farm the Wright Cemetery would be treated with the respect due the honored pioneer dead of western Illinois. Mr. Corder is a worker in the Carthage Assembly of God church and his position on this is completely commendable from the standpoint of both the laws of God this honored and respected Protestant group acknowledges and the laws of the State of Illinois.
This farm was as the writer of this understands part of the Hickerson Wright holdings in his day.
The Hickerson Wright family was the first of the Wright families to come to western Illinois from the older States. Several brothers of this man joined him here in Hancock County almost before he was settled down to housekeeping in our County.
Elaborate marble shaft
(One side)
Hickerson Wright
Died Jan. 24, 1877
in the 86 yr. of his age
(One side)
Cynthia, wife of H. Wright
Died May 20, 1846
Aged 41 ys 3 ms 29 ds
(One side)
James B., son of H. & C. Wright
Died Nov. 6, 1850
Aged 18 ys 2 ms 20 ds
(One side)
Infant
Son of H. & C. Wright
Died May 1, 1842.
(Also elaborate marble slab for Mrs. Wright of above)
(Also elaborate marble slab for James B. Wright of above)
(Also small marble slab for infant son of above)Marble slab
Cossiah Wright
Died Mar. 22, 1865
Aged 37 ys 9 msSmall marble shaft
Sterling P., son of J. S. & D. Willey
Died Dec. 30, 1866
Aged 2 ys 20 ds (age not plain).
