COLE COUNTY, Mo. - Braving the wilds of an untamed frontier, two brothers with their families and their 70-year-old mother trekked from North Carolina to Mid-Missouri during the state's infancy.
Unlike most early pioneers who set up along the riverways for trading, the Dixon family brought with them the means and knowledge for farming. They cleared much of today's Apache Flats area, just west of Jefferson City, and likely raised the food for many of Mid-Missouri's earliest families.
Yet, the nearly 200-year-old Dixon Family Burial Ground can no longer be found.
Synopsis
At a Jefferson City Historic Preservation Commission meeting, Cliff Keeler shared his concern the cemetery was gone following the development of surrounding Pioneer Trail Drive. Although Apache Flats currently is outside the city limits, the commissioners were shocked, many calling it "disrespectful."
The cemetery once stood with a cedar post fence, underneath and aged cedar tree about where the Pioneer Trail Drive roundabout is today, Keeler said.
Several owners after the Dixons respected the small family plot and worked their farm around it.
It had to be within the last 10 years the thick, limestone markers were removed, and the tree and fence taken down. Former property owner Steve Erhart said the cemetery was still there when he sold it.
Calls were not returned by press time from other former property owners and development companies, which might have been able to shed light on what happened after 2004.
Proof of existence
Some have suggested the small, rugged cemetery never existed.
Approximately 80 years ago, Dorothy Kemper compiled for the Daughters of the American Revolution a listing of known Cole County cemeteries and burial grounds. The Dixon Family Burial Ground was "located on the Otto Erhart Farm on Old Highway 50."
The listing named four burials: Catherine Dixon, 1757-1838; Phebe Dixon, 1830-1842; William Harris, death 1845; and James Lobban, 1811-1844. Kemper also wrote "other graves but no stones."
The late Jim McHenry in the 1990s also drew on the work of Thenia Bolton McHenry, Betty Schnider Morse and Bettye Gilbert who compiled the book "Cemeteries in Cole County as recorded in the 1930s" to map the Dixon Burial Ground's location, along with more than 100 others, for the Cole County Historical Society.
George Erhart acquired 205 acres from the Dixon family in 1845. The site was designated a Centennial farm by the University Extension Center, having transferred to four generations after George.
Steve Erhart, great-grandson of the original Erhart, grew up on the land and raised his children in the same place where his father and grandfather also were raised.
"It's neat for a family to have been in the same location for so long," Erhart said.
All of that time, the Dixon Family Burial Grounds were apparent and avoided with respect during planting or other activities, he said.
Location then and now
When Steve Erhart sold the property 10 years ago, it was still there, marked with an aged cedar tree.
About seven thick, limestone headstones were laid up against the tree, no longer in their official spots, he said.
"The Pioneer Trail roundabout is very close to where the cemetery was," he said. "It completely changed when they put the road through."
The school opened in 2009. The road and roundabout followed, built by the private Klosterman Development Company LLC, which bought most of the land now in commercial and residential use in the neighborhood.
Laws and money
Pioneer Trail Drive is maintained by Cole County Public Works, which has issued contracts for a $250,000 federal Safe Routes to Schools sidewalk project a mile long, following the roadway from Business 50 to Rainbow Drive.
The county approved another $250,000 to complete the project with other features, said County Engineer Eric Landwehr.
The cemetery was not considered in the Section 106 review required of historic and cultural resources impacted by the federally funded project, approved by the State Historic Preservation Office.
"We never knew of a cemetery," Landwehr said. "If we were doing a project, we would have checked into that stuff."
Private development does not have the same obligations and requirements, however.
Missouri Statute 214.131 states, "every person who shall knowingly destroy ... remove any tomb, monument or gravestone, or other structure placed in any abandoned family cemetery or private burying ground, or any fence, railing ... of any place of burial of any human being ... is guilty of a Class A Misdemeanor ... shall include those cemeteries or burying grounds which have not been deeded to the public ... and in which no body has been interred for at least 25 years."
Unfortunately, the neighbors' concerns for the removal of the Dixon Family Burial Ground did not reach the Cole County Sheriff's Department, which would have checked into it, said Sheriff Greg White. The department regularly addresses concerns of cemetery access and property destruction, he said.
Those who research cemeteries, like historian Wayne Johnson, do not want to become "cemetery policemen," he said. "We prefer to properly document a cemetery as legal proof of their existence."
Johnson said improved protective laws, better records of the oldest sites and incentives for landowners would help.
"Our state and federal laws fail to address the historic nature of many of these cemeteries or set them aside as a "cultural resource,'" Johnson said.
In a few cases, developers have altered their plans to preserve cemeteries, when they learn about them, he said. And others have erected a sign and monument after the fact, near the destroyed location.
Several cemeteries in Mid-Missouri have been destroyed without prosecution, Johnson said. The problem begins when these oldest burial grounds are not recorded in the property's deed, he said.
"Removal or relocation is an approved legal process, while destruction lacks approval in the legal process," Johnson said.
Another problem comes when time and the elements hide the location.
If a developer or land owner removes it unknowingly, they are not guilty, Johnson said. So those concerned about the act must then prove the cemetery was disturbed deliberately, he said.
"If there's no headstone sticking up or historical knowledge of it, we may never have seen it," Landwehr said of the difficulty for land users to know where some of these oldest sites are.
Pioneer cemeteries
The Dixon family moved to Mid-Missouri from North Carolina before 1838, and by 1856 they owned more than 600 acres in the immediate area today known as Apache Flats, according to land patent information. They also established a mill there.
The matriarch, Catherine, was about 70 years old when they made the trek following the death of her husband, Edmund. She traveled with her youngest son, Levi, who was one of three of her children to marry Boltons in North Carolina. At least three more of her children came to Cole County, including Henry, a state senator, Jeremiah and Martha.
Before moving to Vernon County, Levi buried a daughter, Phebe, in the Dixon Family Burial Grounds. His son Edmund was born in 1842, the same year his sister died.
"The (pioneer) cemeteries stand as landmarks in the migration of families from east to west, sometimes with little other recorded information that these people had settled here for a time," Johnson said. "These family cemeteries that once dotted the countryside are now hidden away from sight by trees and heavy undergrowth or just simply no longer exist with no idea of what happened to the stones."
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