How the Russell Cemetery got its start

Aldrich Tombstone, Russell Cemetery (Doris Christensen/Find a Grave)

I got to wondering the other day just how long the Russell Cemetery, Lucas County's second largest, had been around. The town itself was founded in 1867 along the route of the new Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, but the original plans did not include a graveyard.

There were rural cemeteries in the general neighborhood, but all were several miles away --- Salem and Ragtown to the west and southwest in Benton Township, Greenville in southeast Washington and what we now call Bethel to the northeast in Cedar.

More than 10 years later, in late 1878 and early 1879, the new city's fathers and mothers apparently decided the time had come to rectify the situation and settled upon a 10-acre tract just to the east of town on an extension of East Smith Street.

Acquiring the site turned out to be a little complicated, however. It was the property of William J. Boyd, who owned several hundred acres to the east and south of Russell but lived at Greenfield in Highland County, Ohio. He seems to have resisted the sale.

As a result, the three Washington Township trustees --- Barney O'Hair, G.C. Boggs and J.S. Johnson --- filed suit in Lucas County Circuit Court during January of 1879 asking that the property be condemned so that it might be used for cemetery purposes.

It's not clear whether the situation was settled amicably or if a decree was granted in the supervisors' favor, but during April, the Russell Cemetery Association was formed to raise $1,500 for the purchase and development of the property. So it looks like the the cemetery dates from the spring of 1879.

One of the first to be buried in it was Samuel Hawkins, who died on March 3, 1879, at the age of 35. His will included a provision that the remains of his wife, Perninah (spelled "Peninah" on the family tombstone), who had died at the age of 27 on Jan. 22, 1876, in southwest Iowa's Fremont County, be disinterred and brought to Russell for burial beside him. You can read more about Samuel here.

Others who had died earlier also are buried in Russell, but moved from elsewhere --- including four members of the Aldrich family, also near the main entrance to the original section of the cemetery (stone above).

The Chariton Patriot's Greenville correspondent submitted the following item for publication on Dec. 22, 1881: "The widow Aldrich a few days ago had the remains of her husband and three children moved from the Greenville cemetery to the Russell cemetery. She contemplates erecting a $155 monument in the Russell cemetery. Mr. Beardsley, of Chariton, is to furnish the marble work."

The "widow Aldrich" was Margaret and this item explains why Jonathan Aldrich (Sept. 20, 1816-Feb. 1, 1877) and their three young children, Arabella (May 5, 1864-Sept. 13, 1865) and twin sons, Carlton and Charlton (May 20-21, 1872) are buried where they are, also just inside the old main entrance.

Margaret herself died on July 1, 1911, age 76, at her home in Russell and was buried with her husband and children near, presumably, that fine tombstone provided by Mr. Beardsley of Chariton during 1881.

That Mr. Beardsley was Wilford W. Beardsley (1844-1929), operator of a marble and stone-cutting business just southwest of the Chariton square and father of Sam Beardsley who, with his wife, Edith, founded Beardsley Funeral Home, now Fielding's, in Chariton.