In 1871 Wellington’s original cemetery was ‘born’; 150 years later the Pioneer Cemetery will be dedicated
Thos Dixon – the colored soldier tombstone is one of many, many stories inside the confines of Wellington Pioneer Cemetery.
by Sherry Kline, special to Sumner Newscow — In 1871 a party of scouts headed by C. R. Godfrey and P. A. Wood came to Sumner County searching for a good location for a townsite. On April 2, 1871, just a little more than 150 years ago, the scouts selected the area that would become Wellington.
Two days later, on April 4 surveyor and Union veteran Captain L. K. Myers surveyed and laid out the small town. That same month, because one of the earliest needs for the new town was a ‘burying place’ for its dead, Union veteran, Captain Alfred N. Randall, donated five acres of his homestead in the NE1/4 14-32-1W, located on the northeastern edge of Wellington for the Wellington Cemetery. Captain Myers surveyed the land, creating the cemetery plots.
On Tuesday, May 18, at 2 p.m., the Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society will hold a dedication ceremony at the 150-year-old Wellington Pioneer Cemetery, located on the southwest corner of Highway 160 and Woodlawn. The ceremony will be held near the information kiosk located at the southeast end of the cemetery and will commemorate the completion of the Humanities Kansas grant that was awarded in 2019. The ceremony will also honor Melvin and Della Shafer for their work on the Pioneer Cemetery and their many years of preserving and sharing history. (If there is inclement weather, the ceremony will be held at the Memorial Auditorium)
President Jane Moore believes it’s important to preserve history and so in 2019 she and Vice-President Sherry Kline contacted the City of Wellington with ideas for the project, and then contacted Ryan Elder, Industrial Education Instructor at the Wellington High School, to ask his class to construct a covered wooden kiosk.
Moore and Kline wrote a Humanities Kansas grant and the project received $2,800 in 2019 to assist with researching the soldier’s military history and installing the kiosk that will host the cemetery plat map and the names of those buried in the cemetery. The grant also allowed the SCHGS to bring the Alexander/Madison Chapter of Kansas City, Missouri Buffalo Soldiers to Wellington to present the program: Buffalo Soldiers: From Slave to Soldier.”
“I enjoyed seeing it all come together, and hearing people say that it’s a good project,” Moore said, “and the support we’ve received from the community and the city has been nice.”
City employees Duane Grizzle, Lee Lake, Dawson Monument’s Mario Tapia and Pete Tapia who helped erect the Wellington Pioneer Cemetery marker.
The known burials in the cemetery include at least 10 Civil War soldiers, Union and perhaps Confederate, one African-American soldier named Thomas Dixon, Noah Dixon, former Caldwell mayor and his wife and children, a gunfight victim, merchants, three men who were hung as horse thieves, and one man who was hung for murder (and may have been innocent), and many, many young children.
In January 1931, the G. A. R. placed notifications in local newspapers, including the Wellington Daily News, stating that they planned to move the soldier’s military stones to the Soldier’s Circle in Prairie Lawn so that they could be honored along with the later burials. Several of the stones were moved, though it appears the bodies remain buried in the Pioneer Cemetery and while some of these graves are marked by family stones, other graves are unmarked, and their locations now lost to time.
According to the James Shield’s Post 57 Grand Army of the Republic records, Wellington, the following Union Soldiers were buried in the ‘Old Cemetery’:
Thomas Dixon, Colored Soldier, Regiment/Company unknown, died: 20 April 1872, Plot 119; James Ezekiel Reed, Private, 11 Michigan, died: 2 January 1880, Plot 145; W. D. McCain, 2nd Lieutenant, Co. D, Berry’s Battery, died: Date: unknown, Plot: no longer a stone, grave location unknown; William C. Crawford, Sergeant, Co. A, 10th Illinois Cavalry, died: 21 March 1882, Plot: 197; Thomas J. Milholland, Colonel, 107th Illinois Infantry, died: 29 Nov 1883, Plot: 3; J. R. Pearce, Lieutenant, Co. E, 8th Indiana Cavalry, died: 1 March 1891, Plot: 106; Stephen Cooper, Captain, Co. I, 53rd Illinois Infantry, died: April 1879, Plot: no longer a stone, grave location unknown, O. J. Shafer, Co. D, 20th Indiana Infantry, died: No Death date, no stone, grave location unknown; Henry Wagner, Co. H, 30th Indiana Infantry, died: 1 Jul 1881, no longer a stone, grave location unknown.
Through the years, several have documented the burials from the tombstone inscriptions: In 1982, Boy Scout, Lance Smith, documented tombstone inscriptions as a service project, in 1983, Harvey and Ruth Swan created “Cemeteries of Sumner County”, in 1989, Robert and Nancy Brady published “A Directory of Tombstones, Sumner County” and later, Wellington historian Dorothy Dey created lists from tombstones.
Beginning in 2003, Melvin and Della Shafer and other SCHGS volunteers began researching newspapers and court records to verify and add to the lists of burials created from tombstone inscriptions.
The names of the burials listed on the map enclosed in the kiosk are drawn from these early lists and the research done by Melvin and Della Shafer and other volunteers. The burial list is almost certainly not complete and today it is impossible to know just how many burials were originally in the cemetery. Boundaries changed, early records were lost, and many tombstones have vanished, but in 2003, volunteers including Melvin and Della Shafer and City of Wellington Parks supervisor Roy Kabureck ‘grave-witched’ the cemetery and it is believed that the cemetery has numerous unmarked graves.
KAKE-TV retired anchor Larry Hatteberg with Melvin and Della Shafer.
The cemetery’s grave witching caught the attention of KAKE News’ reporter, Larry Hatteberg, and Hatteberg featured the Shafer’s on a “Hatteberg’s People” segment in 2004.
The Shafer’s also researched Della’s great-uncle, Alonzo Thorp, son of George Washington and Elizabeth (Ball) Thorp. Alonzo, whose father was an early Wellington blacksmith, died on April 2, 1872, and is buried in Plot 85.
Della’s husband, Melvin, died on April 7, 2009, but 90-year-old Della continues to preserve and share history and the research that she and Melvin have done through the years contributed many answers to the burials in the Wellington Pioneer Cemetery.
“On a purely personal level, it was something Melvin and I could do and enjoy together,” said Della Shafer, adding that “recording history has been a big thing for us to do all through the years, because what’s lost is lost forever.”
Larry Hatteberg and Melvin Shafer
But, even after hours of research, there are still several questions that remain unanswered, according to Kline.
“We still do not know what regiment Thomas Dixon served with in the United States Colored Troop,” Kline said, “and we don’t know why Noah Dixon, Caldwell’s first mayor and a prominent businessman and his family were exhumed in the Caldwell Cemetery and reinterred in the Pioneer Cemetery by family members.”
Most of the burials in the Pioneer Cemetery were made from 1872 to 1882. After 1882, when Prairie Lawn Cemetery was opened, fewer and fewer burials were made in the Wellington Cemetery, and according to James Hearlson, sexton for the Prairie Lawn and Pioneer cemeteries, the last burial in the Pioneer Cemetery was Michael Fales, great-grandson of Colonel Thomas J. Milholland. Fales joined his parents and great-grandparents in their family plot in June 2004. Over time, the original Wellington Cemetery became known as the Wellington Pioneer Cemetery, though it was never officially renamed.
Hearlson said that one of the most rewarding aspects of this project has been seeing the community’s interest and involvement.
“The community wanted to be involved in it,” Hearlson said, “the project brings attention to the cemetery and helps people understand the history behind it.”
The SCHGS is grateful to everyone who donated for the sign and the flagpole, and to the City of Wellington and the City’s Electric Distribution and Parks Department for digging the holes for the kiosk and installing the flagpole, the Street Department employees who assisted in placing the sign with the cemetery’s name, and the Cemetery Department employees who assisted with every step of the project.
The Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society is gratefully accepting donations to help with further work at the Pioneer Cemetery, which will include the repair and re-lettering of the early town resident’s stones, and possibly the marking of the burial sites of the four men who were hung. Send donations to assist with the work to: SCHGS, Box 402, Wellington, Kansas 67152, and notate that is for the cemetery.
