Hacking through the Camp/Gehner Farm Cemetery

Note: This post isn't related (at least by blood) to any of the families.  It is however related by land; the descendents of Henry Gehner, Jr.  will know at least part of the story of the cemetery out in the pasture on the Gehner Farm.

The Camp/Gehner Farm Cemetery

Camp/Gehner Cemetery
December 2013

As kids, many Gehner cousins have hiked out there; played in the trees and walked around the cemetery in the back of the pasture.  They've looked at the stones, traced their letters. We've all wondered "who are all these people and how did they end up here?"

A combination of plants going dormant for the winter and my brother-in-law's summer project to clear some of the brush and make the trails accessible again made it possible to walk to the cemetery again for the first time in a couple years.

The trail of land ownership

Bureau of Land Management records for the purchasers of the land from the government after it was surveyed are available online from http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/. The quarter of land that will become the core of the Henry Gehner, Jr. farm was sold by the government as three separate land parcels. Clicking on the purchaser's name below will take you to the original patent records

Parcel	Purchaser	Purchase Date	Highlighted
NW quarter of the NE Quarter	Pickens Camp	2 Dec 1839	Red
SW quarter of the NE Quarter	William Henderson	25 May 1841	Yellow
East half of the NE Quarter	Telemachus Camp	15 October 1835	Blue

FYI: The SE quarter of the section (the square mile of land) was part of the thousands of acres of land in Macoupin and Madison Counties purchased by Elias Dorsey, father of Benjamin L. Dorsey.

Gehner Farm (1993) with original patents overlaid.
"Grandma Gehner's house" and the outbuildings are on the line between blue/red.
Source image from Google Earth

Telemachus Camp was one of the earliest settlers to southern Macoupin County, settling near Staunton around 1820 with quite a history. While Telemachus' land purchases adds up to some 20 parcels from the government, and possibly more from other buyers, his son Pickens Camp has a smaller operation, all in Cahokia Township. (one piece is just east of the Gehner farm, while the other is the section to the northwest)

The Burials

The best source on this cemetery is the WPA report on the cemetery, done sometime around 1938-1939 as part of WPA's historical records project.  The original reports for Macoupin County are available at the County Archives and have been transcribed and put on line by volunteers of the county genealogy society.

The Camp Family

A detailed listing of burials from the WPA shows infant twins of Pickens Camp were buried here in 1847, the first burials in the cemetery. This stone is somewhere out there, probably buried under a couple inches of sod.

Telemachus Camp, father of Pickens Camp appears to be next in 1849. His stone is one of the ones that has survived, but not in its original place- it was leaning on one side (partially sunken into the ground) against the cedar tree in the middle of the photo at start of this post- which is why the one side is discolored.

Four more of Telemachus' grandchildren (Pickens' kids)  are buried out here until Pickens dies and is buried out here in 1867.

Other burials

The WPA report from 1938-1939 lists additional family names buried out there including Garowne, Allen, Ozment, Henderson, McPeek, Dunce and Stull. In an editorial moment, the WPA report says "the names are strange" and aren't those of anyone living in the area then.

One potential clue:

Mary Stull's headstone

Peter H Stull purchases 40 acres in section 36  (this would be across the road to the east of the farm) on 1/1/1851.  Mary Stull is one of the burials listed on the WPA report, with her stone being the oldest identified from September 1851, aged 68. She's listed as the wife of John Stull in the cemetery records; could this be Peter's mother?

Other Details from the WPA Report

A transcription of the WPA report is available from the Macoupin County Genealogy Society's website.
The condition of the cemetery when the WPA staff inventoried the cemetery was about the same is it is now-"The cemetery on the Gehner farm is really in an abandoned condition.  Livestock are free to run over the burial grounds" 

This isn't the only pioneer cemetery in this shape.  The MCGS cemetery list has entries for 15 cemeteries in Cahokia Township- of these seven more are in condition similar to the Camp/Gehner Farm Cemetery.