The focus of this website is to document both the cemetery and the history of the families whose ancestors are buried at the Black Walnut Cemetery located in St. Charles County, Missouri.
The Black Walnut Cemetery is located near the former community of Black Walnut in northeastern St. Charles County. The cemetery dates to 1810 and is very overgrown. Over the years, the graves have been documented and there have been numerous attempts to clean up the cemetery by clearing the land. With this website, we encourage families whose ancestors are buried at the cemetery, along with local historical society activists and community volunteers to work with us on preserving this cemetery.
This effort is two-fold: preserving the physical cemetery land and preserving the history of the families buried at Black Walnut Cemetery.
Preserving the physical cemetery land: After clearing the cemetery site of overgrown brush, we want to map the cemetery for the graves for which there are markers, make sure all the markers have been photographed as they are, then document the work needed to repair or replace the markers. We will also need to begin the process of locating other graves that have been documented at Black Walnut Cemetery and locating any markers which are now buried under layers of dirt and debris.
Preserving the history of families buried at Black Walnut Cemetery: We have created family trees on Ancestry.com for the following families: Bacon, Baker, Bassett/Overstreet, Bemis, Bonds, Cornforth, Engelbrecht, Field/Dwiggens, Gaiter, Garvin, Gill, Hoddle, Jameson/Harris, Jefferson, Johnson, Keene, Kirchdoerffer, Klesener, Kuhn.Kunz, Kuntz, Long/Winger, Major, McKenzie, Meier, Meyer, Millering, Mittalbarger, Mudd, O’Flaherty, Pfeiffer, Prinster/Mauzy, Robbins, and Spencer.
Resources used to document these families include:
- Mary Johnson McElhiney’s 1970 Portage Des Sioux Cemetery list
- Cyril Echele and Jule Pfaff list from April 9, 1986
- Cemeteries of St. Charles County, Missouri Volume 2 Lucille Wittenborn Wiechens 1987
- St Charles County Historical Society Cemetery data base
- Photographs of Black Walnut Cemetery from January 2012 by Justin Watkins and his list
- Documents from Find a Grave Website
- Betty Kluesner list 6 July 2001 and 2004
- relevant pages from The History of Portage des Sioux Township Missouri: The Land Between the Rivers by Donald Mincke 1999
- Cemeteries of St. Charles County, Missouri Volume 5 Wiechens & Geerling 1988