‘Honoring those who came before us’: State program preserves pioneer cemeteries

Though they have long since passed, some of Illinois’ pioneers are receiving due respect.

Milton Township and Palatine Township each received the maximum $20,000 from the new Illinois Cemetery Relief Grant Program. The inaugural grants provide governments, nonprofit organizations and cemetery authorities with funding to clean, restore and maintain cemeteries.

Milton and Palatine townships, which directed funds to a total of five historic cemeteries — one in Rolling Meadows dating to 1836 — were among 10 recipients.

“It’s a responsibility that townships take great care to meet,” Palatine Township Supervisor Andy-John G. Kalkounos said.

The Milton Township Cemeteries Authority, which oversees three historic cemeteries in Wheaton and Carol Stream, has targeted the Jewell Grove Cemetery, circa 1842. At 1410 Champion Forest Court, it’s tucked within a 1-acre plot of the Champion Forest neighborhood.

Most of the grant has gone toward tree maintenance on the forested property, said Milton Township Supervisor Buffy Higgins-Beard.

Trees were trimmed, new ones were planted and invasive plants were removed, she said.

Damaged headstones also were repaired or replaced, according to a statement by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

According to Milton Township, Jewell Grove is the site of the first burial of a white woman in the township — Emily Jewell — on land owned by her brother, Ira Jewell, which he donated as a cemetery.

The township website states that a member of another pioneering family whose markers lay in Jewell Grove, Proctor Price Cooley, paid for the bodies of 20 Civil War veterans to be brought there for burial because their families didn’t have the money.

“We have Civil War veterans there who we’re excited to honor, as well as the other pioneers,” Higgins-Beard said. “I’m always aware as a female supervisor and the first in the role in 176 years, the women that joined these men and set up homes and businesses and set up small communities are just as remarkable, and their stories are often less told.”

One person not buried in Jewell Grove but memorialized there with a stone marker is the late Robert “Bob” Jacobsen, a past chair of the Milton Township Cemeteries Authority.

In a Memorial Day event that honored veterans and included a Civil War reenactment, the stone was dedicated and a new Burr Oak tree planted “thanks to his service,” Higgins-Beard said.

“He spent over 30 years volunteering and organizing dozens of people to either protect or restore, in some cases, the three pioneer cemeteries in the area under Milton Township’s care,” she said.

Palatine Township intends to use the grant to clean, repair, realign and readjust fallen headstones in four inactive cemeteries deeded to the township.

It maintains Sutherland Cemetery in Palatine (1841), Cady Cemetery in Inverness (1841), Salem Cemetery in Rolling Meadows (1862), and Wolfrum Cemetery in Rolling Meadows (1836), the township’s oldest known cemetery.

“It’s actually a great thing that townships do to maintain this, because a lot of their families have moved away, or have long passed,” Kalkounos said.

Sometimes the details of these pioneer cemeteries become shrouded by time and underbrush.

The Palatine Historical Society noted that after the Palatine Township Cemetery Committee in 1974 looked to restore old cemeteries, it discovered that Cook County owned Sutherland Cemetery, on Old Hicks Road north of Rand Road.

The county, however, was unaware. The land had been deeded to the county in 1863 for $1 by the owner of the former farmland, Silas Sutherland. Palatine Township took over the plot in 2002.

Wolfrum Cemetery, named after the late Averry Wolfrum, chairman of the Palatine cemetery committee that no longer exists, was long-neglected until 1975, when a construction crew discovered it while laying a sewer line for a new subdivision, according to the Palatine Historical Society.

The Illinois Cemetery Relief Grant Program is geared to reversing that neglect and honoring these old grave sites and their inhabitants.

“Our cemeteries are places of remembrance, reflection, and local history,” state Rep. Nicolle Grasse of Arlington Heights said in a statement.

“This grant will help ensure that Palatine can continue honoring those who came before us while preserving an important part of our community's history.”