Fiddlesticks: Prather Cemetery Revisited

Let's see. I was on the road to John Whitmer's grave when last heard from --- before another week of vacation interrupted the logical sequence of things. Add another week to recover from chasing Robert Rathbun (died 1856) through Van Buren County and other side trips, and here we are. Back to John Whitmer another day.

I've rewritten and republished a May 19 piece about Prather Cemetery, located east of Chariton in Cedar Township. Like many amateur historians (and a good many professional ones, too), I was operating with incomplete information. Originally, I suggested Prather might actually be the cemetery founded about 1850 by William McDermott, Cedar Township's first settler, and sometimes referred to (logically enough) as McDermott Cemetery. Well!

While slogging through Lucas County's "Abstract of Original Entries" and assorted Cedar Township deeds the other day, I found enough to satisfy myself that the cemetery McDermott founded actually is what now is known as Bethel. The difficulty was, he thought he founded the cemetery on land he owned, but didn't. The oldest part of Bethel actually was on land purchased from the government by my great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth (Rhea) Rhea/Etheredge/Sargent, and her second husband, Thomas Etheredge.

This explains why, during the early 1870s, Elizabeth and her third husband, Edward E. Sargent, deeded the oldest portion of Bethel (for $1) to the township trustees for use as a public burying ground. I hadn't found prior to last week the deed executed at about the same time by William and Nancy McDermott, transferring a half acre of the newer part of the cemetery to the trustees for the same purpose. Together, these two small tract of lands form much of the current Bethel.

I'll get around to more about William McDermott, Bethel, etc., another time, but before doing that wanted to go back and clarify the earlier post about Prather Cemetery.

It now seems almost certain that Prather (called that only because Prathers owned the land around it at a time when someone decided it should be called something other than "that old abandoned cemetery") began as a family burial ground for the original owners of the land, James and Elizabeth Roland. Their daughter, Nancy, recognized as the first non-native child born in Lucas County, died during 1852 and hers is the first marked grave remaining. A Roland son also is buried there. As time passed, a few neighbors chose to be buried near the Rolands, but most opted to use what has been known variously as the McDermott, Sargent and Bethel Cemetery.

So the May 19 post now reflects this new information, and I'll turn left and head for John Whitmer's grave next time.