The Strange Story of St. Joseph's Old City Cemetery

By Leyton Furlong

Every town has its urban legends. St. Joseph is no different. Schools that were used as Civil War hospitals, houses with tunnels for runaway slaves, and a plethora of places Jesse James supposedly visited. Naturally then, I assumed that the story of the old Humboldt Elementary School on Second and Cherry Streets being built on top of a cemetery was just another one of those urban legends. However, after my wife and I did a bit more digging (no pun intended), we found a mountain of evidence suggesting that the area where Humboldt and St. Mary's church now stands was once the site of St. Joseph's first public cemetery. 

For decades, the Old City Cemetery, which lasted from 1846 until its demolition in 1889, has remained a topic of speculation and urban legend. However, the story that we unveiled in our research revealed a complex web of mismanagement, land disputes, government incompetence, body snatching,  and murder that proved to be anything but a myth.

A Pioneer Graveyard

In 1841, Joseph Davis and his family moved to the area that would soon become the City of St. Joseph. Mr. Davis bought about 190 acres of land from Joseph Robidoux in what would now be the North end of town, where he established a farm. On a small section of the property, Mr. Davis discovered an Indian burial ground which had been in use by the various tribes residing in the area before the Platte Purchase. On April 29, 1846, Joseph Davis sold the four acres of this burial ground to the city of St. Joseph, intending to use the area as a public burial ground. 

By this time, St. Joseph had been an incorporated city for three years, and its population was beginning to balloon thanks to St. Joseph's status as a crossing point for settlers heading out west to California and Oregon. The timing of the establishment of the cemetery couldn't have come at a better time. The rise of St. Joseph also coincided with a brutal cholera epidemic that was devastating the nation. In addition to serving the pioneering families that had settled in St. Joseph, many travelers who died of cholera while preparing to head out west were laid to rest here as well. 

The exact boundaries of the cemetery seemingly shifted over time based on comparisons of the original map to what the city would uncover in 1889. Hundreds of people were buried here between 1846 (if not even earlier) and 1857. During the days of the cemetery's operation, many stories emerged. One story told of how a couple reserved the cemetery for their wedding, officiated by Julius C. Robidoux, only to divorce not long after. Another story told of a woman who was nearly buried alive after her family had assumed she died of cholera; thanks to her brothers delaying to take her body out to the cemetery, she emerged from her coffin just in time. 

A Gruesome Murder

One particularly grizzly story from the cemetery was the murder of Edward H. Willard. On the morning of July 27th, 1852, Mr. Willard was taken by four men to whom he owed money. Willard had previously had the men build a picket fence around the grave of a friend buried in the cemetery. However, Willard never paid them their dues. Initially, Willard tried to placate them by telling the men that he had buried $45 in the cemetery. However, when they failed to find the money, the men tied up Willard to a tree and whipped him for upwards of 6 hours, occasionally stopping to all drink whiskey together. Although the men had not intended to kill Willard, by the evening, he had died of his wounds.  One man, Augustus Otis Jennings, was publicly hanged in 1853 not too far from where the Patee House now stands, making him the first person to be executed in Buchanan County. When the cemetery was being demolished in the 1880s and 1890s, Jennings' body was dug up, and his remains were taken home by a city clerk named Charles S. Shepherd, who turned his skull into a makeshift lamp, which he proudly displayed in his office. 

The other three men were sentenced to various terms in the State Penitentiary. William Langston, the man who delivered the final blow to Willard, was sentenced to 20 years, but was able to secure a full pardon from his personal friend, Governor Robert Steward, after only a few years behind bars.  

Abandonment and Demolition

By the late 1850s, the cemetery was in a state of neglect. Larger cemeteries like Mount Mora, which opened in 1851, outclassed the City Cemetery in size and dignity that it offered its internees, especially as St. Joseph only continued to grow in size. In 1855, Joseph Davis sold 156 acres of his property (excluding the cemetery) to the St. Joseph Extension Company.  However, when the company began to plat the area for future development, they included the four acres of land that had been reserved for the cemetery. In 1857, the city purchased a 20-acre plot of land north of what is now Krug Park to serve as a new city cemetery. That same year, city council passed Ordinance 124 mandating the city begin the process of moving the graves to the new cemetery and turning the land into a park. However, when it came time to move the bodies, the undertakers moved some of the stones to newer cemeteries while leaving the bodies in the ground. The Extension Company sold part of the land to the school district in 1867 to build a school (which would later become Humboldt); however, in 1887, the Extension Company attempted to file a claim to the property, arguing that Joseph Davis had made a mistake in plotting out the land in the original 1846 deed. 

In 1889, the Extension Company began work grading and demolishing the old cemetery to make way for building lots. Hundreds of bones were uncovered in the process, and bones were piled up along the streets as spectators came to watch the men bring up skulls and various decayed bones to the surface. Some bones were stolen by students from the nearby medical college or by curious onlookers looking for souvenirs. Some bones were reburied into the ground to fill in the gaps in certain excavated areas. The city, which had forgotten of the cemetery's existence up until the dispute with the school district,  had initially attempted to sue the Extension company for violating land that had been deeded to the cemetery, and various resolutions were produced to begin a proper investigation and to begin legal proceedings. However, in 1890, the city decided to cut their losses and drop the case. City Resolution 11534 ordered that the city gather up as many bones as possible, box them up, and rebury them in the new City Cemetery north of Krug Park.

Through the 1890s, as buildings began to pop up and sewers were installed, many more bones were uncovered. Students from the Northwestern Medical College continued to arrive in the area to steal the bones for educational use. In the process, many of the Native Americans buried there were uncovered along with countless treasures buried with them. On one occasion, a group of students came to the cemetery armed late at night, scaring off police officers in the process. Stones from the cemetery were taken home and used to pave driveways or act as stoops for homes (now would be a good time to check out the underside of your steps if you live in the area). In 1905, the stone of Joseph Franklin Robidoux, nephew of the city's founder, was uncovered. The workmen left the stone on the side of the road for the family to claim it, and it was never seen again. One tragic tale involves the story of an old man from Utah who had returned to St. Joseph to search for the grave of his first wife, who was buried there in the 1850s, only to learn that the cemetery had been completely demolished by the time he returned. 

Above an Indian Burial Ground...

Today, nothing remains of the Old City Cemetery. The demolition of the cemetery, as well as the abandonment of the old Calvary Catholic Cemetery on Garfield Road, led to a city ordinance (which was later repealed) in 1906 that declared cemeteries a public nuisance and forbade the establishment of any new cemeteries within a mile of city limits. The legacy of the cemetery survives through urban legends and myths. Many residents of the Northend may be familiar with the tale of how Humboldt was built on top of an Indian burial ground or an old slave cemetery. The Humboldt School song even makes mention of how the school was built on top of an Indian burial ground. With the cemetery well beyond the realm of living memory, the existence of the cemetery has often been chalked up to urban legend. However, after digging through countless newspaper articles, deeds, and old maps, it's safe to say that the Old City Cemetery was anything but an old wives' tale and that this is a rare case in which the truth really is stranger than fiction.