Hiram Beck Cemetery found again

There are many cemeteries scattered about Fayette County – more than 230 at last count. 

Thanks to the work of volunteers from the Fayette County Genealogical & Historical Society, headstone readings from all known county cemeteries have been recorded and published. This leaves about 30 cemeteries that are known to exist, but their location has been lost over the years. 

Twenty-five years ago, a Cowden lady, Janie Rand, told me of an abandoned family cemetery in Carson Township that had an unusual history. It was called the “Old Hiram Beck Cemetery,” and was begun in the earliest days of white habitation in Fayette County.

Janie had been shown the cemetery by her relatives because it was the burying ground of her grandfathers. She remembered that a large rock marked the burial place of Hiram and his wife, Elizabeth, but she no longer remembered exactly where the cemetery was located.

Janie told me that headstones were never placed in this burying ground – the inscriptions were all carved into the trees. From time to time, relatives would visit the cemetery and deepen the inscriptions.  

This method of recording the names of the dead was confirmed in a July 1939 news article in The Ramsey News-Journal. The brief news article told that visitors to the Fred Wehrle farm were taken to the “Indian mounds of the two chiefs’ graves. Viewing them, then looking to our right we saw ‘H. Luster’ carved on a tree, which stood at the side of his grave.”

Many years later, the trees were cut down, some say in anger at a Beck family member, and the burial places of several generations of Becks and the burial place of old Henry Luster were lost. 

As the years passed by, the exact location of this old cemetery was also lost. 

Hiram Beck was born in 1804, the second son of Paul and Naoma Ogle Beck, and brother to Guy. This family came to what is now Fayette County from Loudon County, Va., in 1804. Their closest neighbors were the Indians, and it is told in the Beck family that Hiram joined them in hunting and fishing.

Hiram’s wife, Nancy Sams, whom he married in Madison County in 1815, died before 1820, and Hiram placed her remains in the old Indian burial ground, high on the western bank of the Kaskaskia River. 

Following Nancy’s death, Hiram married a local widow, Elizabeth Blair Lee, in Fayette County on May 26, 1820, and they were parents of at least 11 children: Naoma, Chloe, Miriam, Hiram Jr., Joseph, Eliza, James, Cynthia, Elizabeth, John and Nancy. 

Hiram Beck died on Dec. 22, 1852, and was buried 6 feet north of the upright stone in the Indian mound. Elizabeth died four years later and was buried beside him. 

The family tradition that Hiram was a drummer boy during the War of 1812 was confirmed by the online database of Illinois War of 1812 veterans. This record indicates that he served as a drummer under Capt. Cook, and is also listed on the roster of Capt. Nathaniel Journey’s Company of Illinois Mounted Militia, serving from July 31 to Nov. 15, 1812. 

Jerry Durbin of Pana is the hero in this story. Jerry also descended through Hiram Beck, and although he had been reared in Fayette County, his home was on the east side of the Kaskaskia. He had never heard of this old burying ground.

Through Jerry’s research, he located someone who knew where the cemetery was, and also the name of the landowner. Jerry received permission to visit the cemetery and invited me to join him as he and his wife, Mary, visited this graveyard for the first time.

Driving down a dusty field road, Jerry told us to begin looking for an upright rock, standing like a sentinel. He was the first to spot it.

Thanks to Janie Rand’s interest in her family history and the stories she kept alive, the “lost” Hiram Beck cemetery was found.