The Black Walnut Cemetery is located near the former community of Black Walnut in northeastern St. Charles County, Missouri. The cemetery, originally located on Moses Robbins’ land, dates from the 1810s to the 1910s. We believe there are about 88 people buried here, many being children from about 39 different pioneer families, many related to the Robbins’ family. In 2019, Robbins family descendants and local activists established the Black Walnut Cemetery Restoration Project with the goal of restoring the cemetery and documenting the history of the families we believe are buried here.
Restoring the cemetery: After clearing the cemetery site of overgrown brush, our volunteers, headed up by veteran cemetery restorer, Jerry Prouhet, are now probing to find gravestones that have been previously documented at Black Walnut Cemetery but are now buried under layers of dirt and debris. The results have been amazing! In addition to locating gravestones we thought should be there, our crew has uncovered gravestones for new individuals we did not know about. Imagine that – finding a child’s gravestone that has been buried for at least 100 years. After the methodical search for gravestones is complete, we will begin to repair gravestones that are broken and to reset them on bases. We will also map the cemetery using GPS.
Documenting the history of families we believe are buried at Black Walnut Cemetery: We are creating family trees on Ancestry.com, communicating with descendants, researching and documenting the following families: Bacon, Baker, Bassett/Overstreet/Timberlake, Bemis, Bonds, Cornforth, Engelbrecht, Field/Dwiggins, Gaiter/Cunningham/Spencer, Garvin, Garvin/Mallerson, Grace, Hoddle, Jameson/Harris, Jefferson, Johnson, Johnson/Best, Keene/Havener, Kempf, Kirchdoerffer/Herle, Kluesener, Kuhn/Kunz, Kuntz, Long, Major, McKenzie, Meier, Meyer, Millering, Mittalbarger, Mudd, Murray, O’Flaherty, Pfeiffer, Prinster/Mauzy, Robbins, Stonebraker, and Winger/Long/Pujol.