COUNTY TO MAINTAIN

NEGLECTED GRAVE YARD

Written by Dean Lesar of the TRG  (September 17, 1986); Contributed by Duane Horn, transcribed by Marge Rakovec.

Solomon R. (1806-1882) and Eunice Martin James (1809-1882).

Neillsville--Ole Faeld, Eben Davis. Jacob Young, Caroline Heise, George Treuker, Gust Hultigren, Ebert Johnson, Anna Schalter

Does anyone remember any of them?

Their names have been cut in stone, some for nearly 100 years. Stones that marks the spot where they were laid to rest in a small cemetery northeast of Neillsville off County Trunk C. The people were residents of the "county poor farm", a forerunner of today's Clark County Health Care Center near Owen.
 

They were indigents basically, bachelors and maiden ladies who couldn't care for themselves and had no one else to do so. They had grown to old to work or were mentally ill. At that time there was no Social Security to assist them.

At the poor farm, the destitute folks helped run the farm and keep the house. The barn still stands but the house was demolished some 30 years ago. According to Marcia Crothers, president of the Clark County Historical Society.

Crothers said the farm was established somewhere in the 1880's. Barley distinguishable dates on weathered tombstones concur.
The 83 grave markers, some lying prone in grass and brush, some tilted, some erect yet hidden, are aligned in rows in a small plot roughly 70 feet by 125 feet in size.

Those who died while residing at the county farm were buried in the this graveyard about 300 feet across a field from the farm. The deceased were simply added to the end of a row, the stones standing in order as a chronology of death for the poor who had no choice but to live at the farm and no choice over where their remains would be spending; the rest of eternity.

For 15 to 20 years, the cemetery had received no maintenance. It still belongs to Clark County, although the surrounding land is now under private ownership.

Trees have flourished from the lack of care, sending their roots towards the coffins below.

Names have been worn from the older stones, probably erasing the last evidence of the lives of those who rest there. A fox has decided to share the hillside and has dug a den between two graves.

A group called the "Old Cemeteries Association" has persuaded the county to resume caretaking operations of the plot, Crothers said. The Forestry and Parks Department will provide the labor.

It doesn't seem that anyone remembers those who are buried under the small grove of trees. Wouldn't some one have brought flowers or at least bothered to trim the ragweed from around the tombstone if they did recall the person?

The dead were probably never honored with a funeral. Who would have come? The county's destitutes-- farm hands and loggers, natives and immigrants, alone and lonely--assumed their place in the somber line of tombs and were forgotten.

Finally, a century after the first interment there, regular respectable care will be given to the burial grounds. The worker who trims the weeds, cut the trees, stands the markers back up will read the names, but will not know anything of the person beneath him.

He will not know why Charles Kalson died eleven months into the new century, why Eben Davis and Nels Gunderson passed away only three days apart in 1918, or why John Phaendler lasted only41 years and died two days after Christmas in 1910.

But somehow the respectable care for that small cemetery seems appropriate. As the last reminder of those people dissolves with the stones that bear their names, a peaceful resting place does not seem to much of a demand.

	These photos  were taken by Scott Schultz. The first one of a rusty fence is all that separates the county farm cemetery from marauding cattle of the private farm that surrounds it. The second one shows the saplings which have risen over the 83 graves to shadow the stones of those who died while residing at the former county center. The third picture shows how thorns snarl around a tombstone of another life that the years have forgotten.