According to an article in the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle that you can read here, a local cemetery turned up on a list of abandoned properties to be auctioned off in Dickinson County (Kansas).  Once discovered, the property was pulled off the auction and the county applied for tax exempt status – which has been approved – and the cemetery has now become the property and responsibility of Union Township.

In this particular instance, the Chalker-Sinclair Cemetery was established in 1889 by the Hope Cemetery Association.  The cemetery has 17 headstones and is located on a landlocked parcel.  The last burial was in 1905.

Funeral Director Daily take:  We’ve talked about this issue before.  I’m from rural Minnesota and the people who built this part of the country established country churches with cemeteries that dot the landscape every couple of miles or so apart.  As the number of farms drops and farms get bigger with paid staff instead of families, the churches – and their cemeteries – go into different states of neglect and abandonment.  And generally, there is no money for upkeep.

This is a problem that is working itself out in counties and townships across the country – a problem that is uniquely rural.  As no more burials take place there is no money to keep up the cemetery.  They will have to be taken over – as the Kansas cemetery above – by government municipalities.  And, in many instances, the municipalities are not excited to be budgeting money to cemeteries when they see so many other needs for the funds.

My personal opinion is that these cemeteries need – and deserve – to be taken care of.  The people buried in them are the people that built America.

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