Previously, I posted about wanting to visit an Illinois cemetery where many members of the Yockey family are buried. Prior research had shown that many of my husband’s ancestors are buried in Mound Cemetery near Hunt City, Illinois. I had also used the internet to determine the exact location of this cemetery, which was just south of Hunt City in Jasper County. I visited this cemetery while visiting Illinois this past September. On Ancestry, I had even found a picture of his grandparents’ headstone. This picture gave me an idea of what I would need to look for once I got there.
Unfortunately I had a cold when I began my Illinois vacation, but I was determined not to let this stop me from doing the research that I had planned. Before traveling to Illinois, I had done a GoogleMap search for driving directions to Mound Cemetery. After looking up where Hunt City was on a road atlas, I calculated that it would take about 2 hours to get there by car.
My husband and I mentioned our planned visit to the cemetery to my husband’s mother and she told us that she had taken photos of many of the graves in that cemetery a few years ago and had put them in an album. With her permission we borrowed the album for the trip. I studied it beforehand and found more pictures of graves that belonged to my husband’s ancestors. The one grave that I was very interested to find was for John M. Yockey and his wife Emily Riley. I didn’t see that in the album my mother-in-law had made.
On Tuesday September 12th in the early afternoon before starting out, I packed up my sleuthing kit, which included a camera, directions to the cemetery, the photo album, and because of my cold-a couple of packs of tissues. I had never been to this part of Illinois and was surprised by the hills and numerous trees that encompassed the landscape, as we got closer. When we were more in the vicinity, the trees became less numerous and gave way to a rolling prairie of cornfields and a lone pumpkin patch.
We followed the directions that I had printed out, but by this time we were both in need of a rest stop and unfortunately there wasn’t one to be found. The directions seemed to be wrong, but it seemed as if we should have been in the general area of the cemetery. We decided that we needed to take a break and headed into the nearest town, Newton to use the restrooms and eat a late lunch.
Over our lunch we reviewed the directions and the road atlas. The only conclusion that we could come to was that the directional street names (North, East, etc.) were wrong. We started back out on the road and headed back to the same area that had given us problems earlier.
This time when we came to what should have been listed as E 2100th St. in the directions, but according to Google was N 2100th St. there was a sign that said Mound Church and Cemetery, Burl Ives gravesite and memorial. I knew that Burl Ives was buried in Mound Cemetery before heading out, but didn’t imagine that there would be a sign about it nearby. I think that our distraction over needing a restroom contributed to our not noticing this sign on our previous visit.
We turned onto the road and over the next ridge was a church, but no cemetery nearby. My husband felt that this might be the area where the cemetery was, but I didn’t think so because the name on the church didn’t say it was Mound Church. I pointed this out to him and he drove down a road that we had passed on our way to this church. Again, over the next ridge was a church and this one had a cemetery. In fact, it was the Mound Church and Cemetery.
We parked in the gravel driveway. I grabbed the camera and we went in. The cemetery was pretty much surrounded on three sides by cornfields. I walked around with my camera and spotted the gravesite and memorial of Burl Ives almost immediately. My mother-in-law had helped me to draw a map of where my husband’s grandparents’ (Courtland M. and Nora R. Yockey) grave was located in relation to the church and Burl Ives’ grave. I was able to find their grave and took a picture of it. I tried to locate other graves, but went back to the car to get the photo album my mother-in-law had made to try to find the others I was looking for.
Using the photo album and wandering around the cemetery I was able to find my husband’s great grandparents’ (Jasper and Zona Yockey) grave. I took a picture of that but was still missing my father-in-law’s younger brother, who died as a baby and my John M. and Emily R. Yockey’s grave.
By looking at the pictures in the album I was able to determine that my father-in-law’s brother was buried next a large square topped stone. Near this stone was a tree. I realized that the tree in the photo might not be there now. My husband had now joined me in my search for these graves. He agreed with my suspicions about the tree.
We were standing a few rows away from the church and propane tanks which were behind it. Off in the distance I saw what could be the tree stump we were looking for. As we walked toward it, I found what might be the two headstones I was looking for.
The grave for my father-in-law’s baby brother was now tilted slightly on earth that had bubbled up slightly. Possibly this was due to the tree being removed? Next to this grave was the grave for my husband’s great-great grandparents, John M. and Emily R. Yockey. The stone was nearly illegible because the engraving on it had eroded most of what written away.I took photos of both headstones. My husband came up with the idea to shoot a video of how to get to these gravesites. We started at the entrance gates to the cemetery and my husband made a video of me talking and leading the viewer through the cemetery to the graves of Richard Yockey (my father-in-law’s brother) and John M. and Emily R. Yockey.
