SMALL, OLD CEMETERIES HAVE STORIES TO TELL
By Joe Holleman, jholleman@post-dispacth.com

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
United States
09/18/2007

The Paddock Cemetery in Moro off Illinois State Route 159.

Here’s hoping that the dead find peace in the fact that loved ones
are taking care of their final resting places.

After asking readers to alert us to small, interesting cemeteries in
the area, 30 of you named about 50 burial grounds.

But there are many – many – more.

According to the St. Louis Genealogical Society, there are more than
400 cemeteries in St. Louis and St. Louis County, most with 100 graves
or less.

We chose three burial grounds for a closer look: the Allen Cemetery in
Eureka, the Urmenia in Chesterfield and the Paddock Cemetery in Moro.

PADDOCK

About six miles north of Edwardsville in a land where cornfields and
subdivisions checker the ground, a small cemetery sits just east of
Highway 159 in a town called Moro.

The stones are surrounded by a rusted iron fence nailed to weathered
wooden posts. Such a small place for so much history and so much
beauty.

"I’ll pick up a couple of friends and drive over for a visit. It’s
a very peaceful site," said Sally Flagg Haake, who now lives in
St. Charles.

"In fact, my mother tells the story that on the day before I was born,
the family had a picnic under the trees."

The ground was set aside by Gaius Paddock, a Revolutionary War veteran
from Massachusetts who died in 1831. Paddock fought the British at
New York, Trenton and Princeton, Haake said. The Daughters of the
American Revolution have placed a memorial plaque on his grave marker.

Paddock’s daughter Jane married Gershom Flagg (1792-1857), a War of
1812 veteran, Haake said.

"In 1816, he started his journey west – by foot and flatboat – to
reach St. Louis in November 1817," Haake said. "Gershom later became
justice of the peace and postmaster of Paddock’s Grove, which was
the name of the area at the time."

The history rolls on. Gershom’s son Willard Cutting Flagg (1829-1878)
was one of the early forces behind the creation of the University
of Illinois. He served as the school’s farm superintendent and was
on the board of trustees from 1867 until his death. He also was a
state senator from 1869 to 1873. Flagg House, a dormitory on the
Urbana-Champaign campus, is named in his honor.

Willard’s son Norman Gershom Flagg (1867-1948) attended Washington
University, where he became lifelong friends with William Greenleaf
Eliot Jr., grandson of the school’s co-founder. The letters between
the two are preserved in Washington University’s archives.

Norman Flagg had a long career in politics. He served as a state
representative from 1909 to 1927, and then as a state senator until
1939.

But alongside all of this history of service and sacrifice rests the
unassuming stone of Alfred F. Kempton (1903-93). His stone simply
bears the inscription: "And the skies are not cloudy all day."

ALLEN

An amusement park, an interstate highway and a strip mall have carved
away at the little town of Allenton, which has been absorbed by Eureka,
and some fear the small cemetery there will become the final whittle.

"The town of Allenton needs to be written about before it is gone
forever," said Wallace Wallach, who has researched some of the graves
in the cemetery.

The most intriguing stone is that of Daniel N. Keeler, a veteran of
the Civil War. The gravestone notes, with fierce pride, on what side
Keeler served:

"Died For the Union" and "Maimed in the service of his country" are
engraved into the stone, which has remained remarkably white since
being placed when Keeler died in 1874 at the age of 34.

Keeler served as a private in Company C, 8th Regiment of the Missouri
Volunteers and was wounded at Fort Donelson. He was discharged at
Jefferson Barracks. The old Grand Army of the Republic Lodge (a
fraternal order popular around the turn of the century) in Wildwood
was named after Keeler.

Underscoring Missouri’s divided loyalties between the Union and
the Confederacy, one row away from Keeler’s grave is the stone for
Chas. B. Broadwater, who served with Company A of the 2nd Arkansas
Infantry.

URMENIA LODGE

Right in the middle of West County suburbia, near Olive and Woods
Mill roads in Chesterfield, sits a small cemetery in a grove of old
oak trees. Most of the graves are from burials in the late 1800s.

"It was for folks who farmed around here when there was nothing out
this far west," said Wesley Stemme, 76, who has retired from farming
but still lives nearby. He added that some of the farmers belonged
to a fraternal organization called the Armenian Lodge.

"But there were all kinds of different people buried there because
it wasn’t affiliated with any church," Stemme said. "And I think it
also served as a potter’s field of sorts for burying some people who
had no one."