By Steve Joyce

There are a lot of questions that are asked of public libraries and one has stumped Gillespie Public Library for years is “where is ‘this person’” buried in the Gillespie Cemetery? Until this past summer, the answer is “I have no idea”.

The Gillespie City Cemetery land was originally set up just outside the original city limits. Early burials date to the founding of Gillespie in 1853. Early burials also had very little or no organization to them. That is why the markers seem to be scattered in the upper area of the cemetery.

The Cemetery Board had very sketchy records of who was buried where and had no way of having a source for the public to access. Librarian Steve Joyce, with the Board decided on a project for the community. The project is divided into two phases.

Plotting the cemetery is phase 1.

The Cemetery Board decided to divide the cemetery into 9 sections and those sections divided into rows or in some cases the rows were more like areas because of the scattering of burial markers. The sections were A-AA-B-C-D-DD-E-EE and F. The only problem was who was going to do the leg work and identify these grave markers.

At the start of the 2020-21 school year. Joyce contacted social studies teacher Casey Sholtis about a “co-vid like” project for his Current Events class. A chance to get outside away from the masks of an indoor classroom. This project needed a large group of people doing the same thing in a controlled environment. Bringing a class of 20-25 students, working and volunteering together outside away from the classroom seemed to be a perfect idea. Sholtis thought it was a good idea and could incorporate lessons out of it.

This project was to plot all the people buried in the Gillespie City Cemetery. Joyce and Sholtis felt this seemed to be a monumental task but the kids can start it and see how long it takes. The students would leave the classroom and come to the cemetery and plot all those buried there. The project started in the fall of 2020 and completed in the spring of 2021. Approximately 40-50 students were involved.

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The students paired up and were given a row or section to walk down and put the name, date of birth and death, and veteran status on a sheet of paper and then transfer it to an Excel spreadsheet.

In the fall of 2020, the class started sections E, EE, and F behind Welfare Park. The leg work was continued during the spring with another class doing sections A through DD. To the astonishment of the Cemetery Board, the students were able to finish cataloging and plotting the entire cemetery in one school year.

During the summer of 2021, Librarian Joyce corrected and cleaned up duplicate records of those buried in the cemetery. The first part of the Cemetery Project was almost complete. Within a few weeks, Joyce said he had three different requests for successful locations of burials, so there is some success to the project.

Financially, the next part of the first phase was going to be a little expensive. Now that the rows are plotted, bricks had to be bought and engraved and signs had to be erected.

In July 2021, a trivia night raised approximately $1500 and many donors added another $1500 to help pay for the expenses. In late summer, 144 bricks were bought and engraved identifying rows for the 9 sections. Approximately 20 volunteers helped lay the bricks in each section.

Signs were erected identifying each section with an information sign in the middle of the Macoupin Street or upper section. The information sign has a map showing the cemetery and each section and directions on how to use it. It also included a QR code for the tech savvy public.

On the library’s website, you can find the Gillespie Cemetery plot locator. A map of the cemetery is also included marking the nine sections. There is a downloadable file that opens up a spreadsheet with an alphabetical listing of all the names on burial markers in the cemetery. Each name tells the birth date and death date when possible. It also lists the section and row number. You then find the section and row and walk that row in the cemetery to find the grave marker.

The Gillespie Public Library will help anyone in locating the individual grave markers by calling 217-839-3614 for additional help and information.

The Gillespie Cemetery is old and many of the markers are broken or not readable. Some are not identifiable with names and dates. These people are marked as unknown. Any help identifying unmarked graves can be done by calling Joyce at the library.

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It is important to continue adding future names. Kravanya Funeral Home keeps the Gillespie Public Library up-to-date on current burials and their location. This list continues to grow and has over 3,600 names on the website.

The second phase of the project is cleaning up the cemetery.

In this phase, the object is to clean up the cemetery. There is a need to repair and straighten tumbled headstones. Some of the markers are half buried and some need to be cleaned. Hopefully this phase will start in the summer of 2022.

While the second phase is ongoing, the Gillespie City Cemetery board would also like to start giving some of the burial sections that have no markers or the marker is so broken beyond repair it needs to be replaced with new flat headstones. It is estimated there are at least 20 headstones that could immediately be replaced or added.

There is also a need to identify important people or groups buried in the cemetery. One example of this is the headstone of David Dickie, a Medal of Honor winner from the Civil War. There are many Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery and a few from the Spanish-American War.

Again this can be expensive. We are again asking the community for help in the second phase. Any donation is helpful. Donations can be sent to the Gillespie Public Library and marked as cemetery repair or Gillespie Cemetery-Phase 2. The money will be put in a separate cemetery account and designated solely for those replacements, repairs, or special markers.

Joyce again emphasized, “The cemetery has recently become one of those things a community can have as a source of pride and needs to be maintained. We need help with information, cleanup, and donations. There is a lot of history in this cemetery and we can be proud of it.”

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