The 160-acre tract that included the grave was purchased from the U.S. government by John Howard and his wife, Mary (Sutphin) Howard, on 23 May 1850 for the going rate of $1.25 per acre. At the time it was unbroken, open and treeless prairie with only one landmark --- the grave. The Howards did not live here, however.
They also had purchased land about two miles northwest along the Mormon Trace, due south of what now is the city of Chariton and encompassing part of Chariton Point settlement. It was here, apparently, that the Howards lived until Mary’s death on 12 October 1850. Although her remains now lie in the Chariton Cemetery, she was buried first in the old Chariton Point burying ground, now known as Douglass Cemetery.
Not long after Mary’s death, John Howard disposed of his holdings in Lucas County and moved “back east” to Jefferson County, Iowa, where he married as his second wife a woman named Gracie.
The prairie farm in Benton Township went to Margaret (Sutphin) Howard, sister of John’s first wife, whose husband, Joseph Hobson, had died 4 September 1849 in Van Buren County and who had been buried in the Bonaparte Cemetery where his grave still may be found.
On 14 February 1852, John and Gracie Howard (then of Lockridge Township, Jefferson County) sold the 160-acre cemetery farm to Margaret for $100 and she moved there with some of her children, including Rebecca (who married first Nelson Bell and then Chester F. Plimpton), Elizabeth Adeline (who married Francis M. Wilson), John Milburn (who married first Margaret A. Clark and then Mary Eugenia Taylor Gove) and Lucinda (who married John P. Martin).
It was Margaret and her family who broke the land and built a home probably in the southwest corner of the farm, where what I still call the Johnny Jennings home is located.
It probably was during Margaret Hobson’s tenure that neighbors began to bury their dead near the lone Mormon grave northeast of the Hobson home, thus forming a cemetery with a name that, if there was one, has faded into obscurity.
Margaret Hobson died 19 August 1870 and was buried in the Chariton Cemetery beside her sister, Mary (Sutphin) Howard, whose body by that time had been moved from the Douglass Cemetery.
Upon Margaret Hobson’s death, her son, Milburn, purchased from her estate for $1,100 140 acres of the 160-acre farm on 26 August 1870. This farm was known a century later as the George and Faye Lovell/Johnny and Ora Gartin farm (Johnny's wife was Ora Lovell, daughter of George), and it probably was the Milburn Hobsons who developed the farmstead there. The cemetery was included in this purchase.
The 20-acre tract in the southwest corner of the farm that probably included the original Hobson farmstead was sold for $500, also on 26 August 1870, to Margaret’s daughter, Adeline, who had married Francis M. Wilson.
Three years later, on 6 March 1873, Milburn Hobson sold to the Wilsons the 20-acre tract that included the cemetery.
And on the 12th of June, 1873, Adeline and Francis M. Wilson sold the cemetery site for $50 to the Salem Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church.
This is why the year “1873” is inscribed on the plaque that marks the cemetery entrance, although the burial ground itself is about 25 years older.
Soon after purchasing the land, Salem Methodist Church was built in front of (west of) the cemetery and, during 1875, the cemetery was replatted as Salem Cemetery into 52 lots, each 9 by 41 feet with space for eight or nine graves. Since there are no graves at Salem that seem out of place, it is likely that the new plat followed at least partly an earlier one.
Salem remained an active Methodist congregation until the 1930s and its members administered and maintained the cemetery during those years.
The Methodist congregation had faded by the 1940s, however, and the church was closed for a time. It was reopened by community residents during the 1940s, but took a Baptist turn and declined to accept Methodist preachers. As a result, the Iowa Methodist Conference during 1947 sold the church and church grounds to what became known as the Salem Community Church. The cemetery was deeded to the Benton Township trustees who assumed responsibility for its care.
Salem Community Church remained active well into the 1970s, but declining rural population and the deaths of key members caused it to close during that decade. A decision was made to demolish the church building, still well-maintained and structurally sound, and the church grounds, which had begun to be used for cemetery purposes as the original cemetery filled, also were deeded to the Benton Township trustees. Today, only the church’s front step remains.
That left the cemetery in the form it now has. Upon the death of Burdette Smith, his family placed new fencing (replacing hitching posts that had rotted), brick gateposts and a plaque identifying Salem at the front. Some years later, hard-maple trees were planted in memory of Reefa (Miller) Myers to replace giant soft-maples that had died.
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