A Tour of Marshall Cemetery; Visiting The Founders of Mokena

Founded in 1839, the Marshall Cemetery is home to many of Mokena's founders, with names like Marshall, McGovney, and Jones. It is also the resting place of numerous war heros from the Civil War, and more. Matt gives us a walking tour as we cover only a few of the families buried here.

The setting is a quiet country road, a little busier than it was in the 1800's, but it still maintains a charm of yesteryear, where you can still feel a little of what it felt like back in the early days of Mokena. We hope you enjoy this walk through of the historic, Marshall Cemetery!

There is a full video of our walk on our YouTube Channel. You can find that by clicking here!

Transcript

Israel: 0:00

Welcome to Mokina's Front Porch, a Mokina history podcast with Matt Galick and me, Israel Smith. So how long has Marshall Cemetery been around?

Matt: 0:13

Well, I'm not sure when exactly it was founded, like I couldn't tell you when the first person was buried there, but it's probably or it's easily about the same age as Denny's Cemetery or Pioneer Cemetery in Mokina is, and that goes back here in Mokina to 1839. Marshall Cemetery might be like maybe a handful of years younger, but it is nevertheless handful of years younger but it is nevertheless it's one of the oldest landmarks in New.

Matt: 0:47

Lenox Township and before we get out there. Who are some of the memorable people or people of note buried there? Sure, yeah, just about every member of the McGoverny family is buried there. John McGoverny is buried there, who was our first settler, who lived where Mokena would later be built. He came here in the fall of 1831. Then his son, esaias, is buried there, who was our first mayor, along with his wife Matilda. And then Esaias' son, esaias Irwin, is buried there, who usually was just called Irwin.

Matt: 1:27

He was a postmaster of Mokena for a very, very long time. He was, along with his father. Azaius Sr was a businessman in town in the post-Civil War era for a good amount of years there, for a good amount of years there. The Elijah McGoverny family is buried there, who were our fans might remember Elijah McGoverny as being the farmer who originally farmed what would become the Eddie Yunker farm, his parents having bought the property from the McGoverny family. So Elijah's buried there he died in the 1920s was a Civil War veteran. His Elijah's son, dick McGoverney, is buried at Marshall Cemetery, who lived to be almost 100 years old and was quite a local character. He lived in our calaboose or jail for many, many years after it was a jail.

Israel: 2:24

Now, you know, as we drive out here, it's not, you know, like Pioneer Cemetery is right downtown, right, this is a stretch.

Matt: 2:31

I mean, this would have been a country cemetery.

Matt: 2:33

It was. It was a country cemetery right on the Marshall property. That's why they call it Marshall Cemetery. They're all buried there too. And yeah, it's technically in New Lenox Township it's just a little ways over the boundary between Frankfurt Townships and New Lenox Townships but it's interesting because most of the people buried there were Mokinians. I think one of the reasons for that is just the fact that the Methodist church in Mokina and the Baptist church in Mokina back in the 19th century and 20th centuries never had their own cemeteries, so a lot of their people wound up in Marshall Cemetery.

Israel: 3:14

And this is a road that I mean it's a pretty quiet road now.

Matt: 3:19

Yeah.

Israel: 3:20

Clearly you know going through development and has changed a lot with the addition of the subdivision there and you know just getting bigger in the area growing yeah. But, you know how would Mokinians have gotten here back in the early days? Gotten out here, yeah, was it through the port road? Kind of similar to what we're doing.

Matt: 3:43

Yeah, you know, it would have been more or less the same way one would take today, although this road, this little road right here where we're driving, is not old. The configuration of the roads right here was a little different. And what is now Regan Road, which we're turning onto, how could I explain? This curve never used to exist and the road used to just go straight into Francis and one would turn off of Francis Road onto Regan Road, or one could also come through Marley and down out this direction too.

Matt: 4:26

The Marshals were some of the founders of Marley's, where the the name marley came from. Okay, a combination of marshall and haley. Haley was the other gentleman that uh founded uh, uh, marley. But yeah, what we're driving through right now was the uh, the acreage, uh that belonged to the family. In fact, there were a few Marshall farms around here, going up into the Civil War era, the area where you turn off of Francis onto Regan. Right there was the George Marshall farm and then his father, chester Marshall, who was kind of like the patriarch of the marshall family, uh, war of 1812 veteran, uh, very, very interesting man. He lived closer to where marley is now and then there was uh nathan marshall lived further down town line, or what we today would call town line. Uh. So yeah, there wasn't just one marshall farm, there were kind of spread all over this area here.

Israel: 5:25

So I've never been here before.

Matt: 5:27

This is my first time coming through here, so is this the best place to park?

Israel: 5:32

I would say, go in through just either of these gates here.

Matt: 5:35

Yeah, I usually just park here myself and I walk in through the gate right there. There's like a little latch. All right, well, let's do it. But this is this whole kind of semi-empty. I mean, there's a few graves here, but this whole portion of the cemetery right here, kind of like from the flagpole up to back here, is an addition that was added onto the cemetery. Oh, some new lennox. People might correct me on this, but I seem to recall this happening around 2007 or 8. Oh, wow, and this was all forested up to that point, which lent even more of an atmosphere to Marshall Cemetery.

Israel: 6:17

Yeah, like I mean, you come out here and it really is like a very peaceful, you know, wooded, you know, and these gates Do you know what's the story with the gates?

Matt: 6:28

Like, how long the fencing's been here, the um this fencing right here and kind of like down there is not too terribly old. I want to say it's from roughly around the time the cemetery was added onto. But I remember a gate like this being here. Actually I believe it was that gate over there was here the first time I started coming here back in the 90s, so I don't know if it's historic or not.

Matt: 6:57

Very cool, in years past there was I always go in right over here. In years past there was, I always go in right over here. In years past there was a Marshall thank you, a Marshall Cemetery Association that ran the cemetery and sold off the plots and took care of the grounds and so on and so forth and that was run by the Marshalls and the McGovernies and the I think the Marieties were involved with that and in fact the last member of the association was Elmira McGoverny who died around 94, 95, thereabouts, and then it went defunct when she passed and there was sort of like no one to care for the cemetery. So then it transferred into the uh, it transferred into the care of New Lenox Township.

Israel: 7:50

And that's who takes care of it now.

Matt: 7:51

As far as I know, yeah, I believe yeah, they're still running the show nowadays.

Israel: 7:58

Very nice marker there.

Matt: 7:59

Yeah, it's very cool and the cemetery is a Will County historic landmark.

Israel: 8:04

Oh, wow, just like.

Matt: 8:05

Denny's Cemetery is on Wolf Road.

Israel: 8:07

Matt, you want to be our tour guide? Sure, this is my first time here. Oh, yeah, definitely. So where should we start? Oh, man?

Matt: 8:13

that's such a good question because every single person of Marshall Cemetery has such an interesting story. I know where I could take you. To start off with one of our local heroes, right up here. Okay, and unfortunately his gravestone is toppled. I don't know if it fell over on its own or if somebody pushed it over. It's been toppled for a few years now, one of my flag holders. I put these flag holders out here.

Matt: 8:45

This is the at least the epitaph of a local gentleman by the name of Thomas Packard Parker, who was born in the 1830s 1833, as we can see in Vermont and later came west to what is or what was, will County in.

Matt: 9:04

I think he got here in the 1850s or maybe earlier. That I'm kind of foggy on the exact date, but in any case he was a Marshall family member. His stepfather was Rollin Marshall, who was one of the Marshals who established this cemetery. But in any case, thomas Parker was a farmer and he farmed in the vicinity of Town Line Road. He did consider himself a Mokinian because when he volunteered for the Union Army during the Civil War in 1862, he gave his residence as Mokina and he fought with the 100th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which is the Will County Regiment and ultimately he was one of our four Mokenians who was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, georgia, in September of 1863, which was the second bloodiest battle of the war after Gettysburg, and probably you can make a case for it being one of the worst days in Will County history, as the regiment suffered horrible casualties.

Israel: 10:14

And were others lost from Mokena that day?

Matt: 10:17

Yes, yes, there were two other men aside from Thomas Parker who were killed during the battle. Aside from Thomas Parker, who were killed during the battle, and one man who died of his wounds in a military hospital about a month or two later, and do you know, had there been, or was there another day where more Mokinians had been lost in battle, not since?

Matt: 10:40

then, no, wow, we lost people at the Battle of Stones River, tennessee, which was a little before chickamauga, and, uh, various men over the course of the war who died of disease and and things like that.

Matt: 10:53

But, um, uh, chickamauga, uh, was, yeah, was one of the worst days in mokina history, wow, and I I say I don't know for sure if he's actually buried here, because I don't know if he was buried on the battlefield or if they actually were able to ship him home, but in any case, his infant son, willie, is buried here, and this is his daughter, viola, who's buried next to here.

Matt: 11:23

She would have been quite young when her father died, but she lived until the 1930s and I wish there was a way we could set his marker back up. When I was still on the Preservation Commission, we tried to figure out a way to do it, uh, preservation commission, we tried to figure out a way to do it, uh, but we never really came up with a solution because we figured out that you would probably have to drill rods, like into the base here and into the stone itself, but and then set it back on top yeah, yeah, so so yeah, I don't know if this was vandalism or if it just kind of toppled on its own, because the base was kind of precarious for a long time.

Matt: 12:05

Yeah, uh, but yeah, thomas parker was, um, was one of our civil war heroes, absolutely, and um, it's interesting, there are photographs of him oh, really survived. There's one there's a daguerreotype of him as a civilian. That was probably taken in the 1850s sometime. And then there's one photo of him actually in uniform holding his musket, which is really cool.

Israel: 12:31

What is this stone structure behind here? Good?

Matt: 12:33

question. So this thing, I don't know what to call. It did hold at least one grave at one point, but I've never seen any documentation for this. Was it?

Matt: 12:46

we don't know if it was built for one person or just used by one yeah, I don't know if it was built for one or if there was more than one in here or what, but uh, I was told uh that whoever was in here was moved out of here, because Marshall Cemetery, unfortunately, over the years like 70s, 80s, even into the 90s was kind of like the number one place around here for younger people teenagers to come party and get rowdy, and there was a lot of really horrible vandalism that happened here over the years and this thing at one point had been uh smashed into and one person told me that he he could kind of like look in and see the coffin or, as it were, inside. Oh wow, yeah, yeah. So uh, word has it and I don't have any reason to doubt this, that because of all that, the remains that were in here were moved out and put elsewhere.

Israel: 13:50

Now Pioneer Cemetery. We had the issue, it got overgrown and all that. And then you talked about how they came through and kind of scraped the top.

Matt: 14:03

Nothing like that ever happened out here, not that I know of um, because the thing, the thing that kind of differentiates marshall cemetery from pioneer cemetery, aside from marshall cemetery being a little bigger uh was that the marshall family stayed here, so there was always care for the cemetery, at least until later years. Like I was saying, as we got into that kind of like vandalism timeframe 70s, 80s when it was just Elmira McGoverny, who was an older lady who probably couldn't, didn't have the resources to do much of anything, things were taken care of pretty well. Yeah, until that point at least. But luckily, after she passed, the township got a hold of it and has done a lot. They've pieced a lot of the gravestones back together and have kept it from getting too overgrown and stuff like that.

Israel: 15:01

Do you think that this feels much of the same way that it would have felt back in the day when they were coming out here? The marshals were coming out here and burying or visiting their relatives' graves.

Matt: 15:13

Yeah, I think so, I really do. With the exception we can kind of hear the hum of I-80 in the background. But I think minus that and the occasional car that comes by, you get a lot of that same vibe, I think.

Israel: 15:27

And across the street you know, not developed. Now it's pretty probably natural to what it was at the time. Right, I mean, it's a, I would think so yeah. Pretty much. It holds the country nature very well out here?

Matt: 15:41

Yeah, it does I mean noisy but peaceful, yeah, exactly. So where?

Israel: 15:46

is the oldest part of the cemetery or maybe the oldest headstone that we know of.

Matt: 15:50

Well, let's see. I'm not quite sure of what the oldest headstone is, but there's a few easy candidates. One of the oldest ones that's still here would be this grave right here. This is the grave of Chester Marshall, who died in 1859. And he is the patriarch of the Marshall family. He was born in about 1780 in New York State and he was a War of 1812 veteran. He fought with the New York militia during the war, just like Alan Denny did, and they came out here, settled right in this immediate area, about 1834,.

Matt: 16:33

I want to say, and one thing that Mr Marshall was known for, aside from being a deacon in the Baptist church, was that he was very, very involved in the temperance movement, which was like an anti-alcohol movement as well as abolitionism, and we don't have any evidence that he had a station on the Underground Railroad per se, but he was very involved with high-profile abolitionists. He had one of the love joys who are history buffs will know about the love joys of downstate who were quite a big deal in the abolitionist movement. He had one of them as a guest out here at one point. And yeah, chester Marshall, he was said to be a very tall man, had a very prominent beard, just a really interesting guy, and the cemetery was definitely in use for a while before he passed. But his grave, along with John McGovern's, which is just right over there, is probably one of the oldest markers that still exists. But yeah, john McGovern is right over here.

Israel: 17:53

So are people still buried out here now?

Matt: 17:57

Yeah, yeah, not in this part of the cemetery. All of the modern was I wrong about that? All of the modern graves oh, I'm sorry it's over here. All of the, but this is a story too. Sorry it's over here, but this is a story too.

Israel: 18:12

Yeah, that's what I was just noticing.

Matt: 18:13

All of the modern graves are over in that eastern part of the cemetery.

Israel: 18:18

That was added in that.

Matt: 18:19

Okay. But I'm glad we stopped here though, because this is a really cool monument to the George and Margaret Marshall family and they're all kind of buried in this vicinity, right here. So all of these children are the grandchildren of Chester Marshall, who we just visited. George was his son and, as I mentioned on the way here, his farm where he lived and worked appears to have been right around at the intersection of Francis and Regan Road. But George has a very interesting story, because he went west in the early 1850s to seek his fortune in California in one of the gold rushes, and he had, if I'm not mistaken, he had written back to his family, said that he was successful and that he was coming home, but then he never made it back and no one really knows what happened to him. He died somehow, but whether it was an accident or someone murdered him to steal what his gold he found, we don't really know. Wow. But most of his sons, if not, let's see. Actually, yeah, all of his sons, except the two youngest, george and Frederick, were also Civil War veterans Albert Marshall, edwin Marshall, who was always called Webb, and Griffin Marshall, all buried here in Marshall Cemetery, all Civil War veterans. Albert's grave is, and Ralph Marshall also a Civil War veteran. They're buried just right over here. Albert has staked a really high-profile place in Will County history because he was a Will County judge for many, many years after the war. And it's interesting, albert Marshall actually wrote a book in later years called Army Life. That is just his memoir of having served in the Civil War and you could get it on Amazon. It's easily available. And let's see Edwin Marshall, or Webb as he was called, is interesting. He also volunteered for the Union Army as soon as he was able to and was not a combat veteran, but he died of disease here at home on the home front, well, a member of the 20th Illinois Volunteer Infantry and is buried here. So he was the one from his immediate family who did not survive the war.

Matt: 20:56

I return to the Civil War a lot here because there's about a dozen Civil War veterans buried here. Each one of them has really interesting stories. Oh, the sunlight's perfect on this gravestone right now. Interesting stories, oh, the sunlight's perfect on this gravestone right now. So this is the. This is the grave of John McGoverny, who was the patriarch of the Mokina McGoverny family, uh, and died 1859, the same year as um Deacon Marshall, um Chester Marshall, excuse me and John McGovern was basically the founder of Mokena.

Matt: 21:33

He was born in 1797 in Adams County, ohio, and with his young family, came by covered wagon to what is now Mokena in the fall of 1831,. They set down roots and almost right after they got here the Black Hawk War broke out, which sent them back to Indiana, actually because it was the nearest thickly populated area, because they didn't know too much about the Pottawatomie yet who lived out here, and there were a lot more of them than there were of the McGovernies. There was barely anybody else out here, so they weren't going to risk being attacked by them. But it turns out to be kind of a funny story because when they came back after the war was over, it turned out that the Potawatomi took care of all their stuff for them that was here. They had animals and stuff that they left behind and they found that they had been fed and tended to. That's incredible.

Israel: 22:37

Yeah, yeah, the stone is very worn. Can you kind of point out what it says and where? Yeah, or what you can of it, at least.

Matt: 22:45

Yeah, absolutely, I can see his name here. I can see j o, h, n, I can see an m, a little c and then the g o v n, e, y right there, and I know this because I've I've seen it when the sunlight's been a lot better on it and the shadows you can read it a lot better. In fact, I'll give a plug. I believe the picture of this gravestone that's on a really cool website called find a grave, which is like a database uh, country-wide, worldwide database of just millions of graves in thousands of cemeteries. The picture that was taken of this is taken by a Mokina guy by the name of Mike Lyons. So if he's listening, he deserves a plug because he does really fantastic gravestone photography. Oh, wow. So if I remember right, his picture of John McGovern's gravestone that he put up on Find a Grave is really, really leg, because the the sun is hitting it just perfectly, but I can see where it says aged right here 62 years. This looks like 6, 16, maybe days so the aged?

Israel: 24:00

that's different, like that's not something you see typically right on a headstone. Is that a time thing for this?

Matt: 24:07

uh, back in that era it was pretty common. I would say, okay, um, you don't really see that anymore, nowadays it's just dates, right, but um, they typically would uh, write out the date the person died and then give their age. So you kind of have to compute it in your head, okay, what the birth date would be.

Israel: 24:26

Wow, yeah, well, uh, before we lose too much sunlight, who else should we visit out here? Okay?

Matt: 24:33

we'll do. We'll do a guy by the name of john van horn, okay, who's buried in this far back corner of the cemetery over here, who is a pretty interesting character. I believe I did a blog post about him at one point.

Israel: 24:47

All of our cemeteries have very different feels, don't they? Yeah, they do yeah. I mean this is this feels very different from St Mary's or Pioneer or St John's? Oh, absolutely it does.

Matt: 25:00

Yeah, it does, it definitely does. So this, this is the grave right here of a gentleman by the name of John Van Horn, of a gentleman by the name of John Van Horn who was born in the 1820s in New York State. He eventually, like just about everybody else here, came west before the Civil War, settled in what would become Frankfort Township. His family members, the Van Horns, were also kind of a big deal in the history of Frankfort Township as they settled roughly around the same time the McGovernies did, but a little closer to Frankfort. But John Van Horn was one of them. He, in the years leading up to the Civil War, worked as a laborer in Mokena. But like so many of his generation, he volunteered for the Union Army during the war and he served in a couple different regiments.

Matt: 25:54

This gravestone lists his service with the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Excuse me, he served a stint with them them, if I remember right, kind of towards the beginning of the war. His term was up and then he re-volunteered, re-enlisted in a New York regiment. I can't remember why. I think he something had taken him out there and then he had decided to re-enlist in the Union Army. But he was definitely in the thick of it. I do have one source that says he was wounded at some point, but he got another really bad. There's so much I could tell about his life. He was such a character but he did get a serious, non-combat related injury in the war Out in Virginia around 1864, uh, out in virginia around 1864.

Matt: 26:57

He uh had some duty where he was to unload wooden crates of hard tack which, um, for listeners are unfamiliar. Hard tack was the like, the staple ration of union soldiers in the civil war. Okay, they look like uh crackers that are about that big, but they're rock solid and they they don't bad. So that's why the Union Army produced millions of them. Not something you'd want to eat, believe me. You'd have to smash it up into pieces to eat it, soak it in grease or some sort of something hot. Anyway, that's a whole other story. But he years later said that this lifting these crates of hardtack, this repetitive duty, gave him a hernia that was really bad, that troubled him for the rest of his life and he died around 19, must have been around 1910 or thereabouts Kind of an older guy at that point and he lived in Mok yeah for the rest of his life yeah, he did, he.

Matt: 27:53

There was a portion after the war where I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think he went up to wisconsin for a while and worked in, I think, in forestry and like the lumber industry up there for a while, but he spent most of his life in Mokena. He lived in a little shack on uh cross street. That is long gone and he uh, he. This is where it gets interesting about John Van Horn, because he was a hard drinking, really tough guy who was not afraid to get into fights with people, fist fights. He was getting in trouble all the time and there's one that kind of a funny story that just illustrates what kind of guy he was.

Matt: 28:43

He had been in one of the saloons in Mokena and for some reason or other was kicked out of it, and so he had like a grudge against this saloon keeper. So one day some other guys are in this same saloon and they're kind of warming their hands around a kind of like a stove, as it were, you know burning coal or whatever, and it was the middle of winter. John van horn strolls into the saloon and he's wearing really thick mittens. He picked up the stove off the floor and just walked out the door. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. And uh, the same, uh same person remembered that back in that time the saloon keepers on front street would have their empty beer barrels just stacked up in front of their saloons while they were waiting, you know, to be taken away and have new ones come in, and john van horn would kind of creep from saloon to saloon and sort of pick up the barrels and try to get every last drop out of them that he could.

Matt: 29:45

What a character, yeah, he definitely was. He was, um, he was someone that I'm sure had a lot of stories. Yeah, and this gravestone, this is a. You'll see these a lot in cemeteries this age. There's a few just like it here in this cemetery. This is a a standard governmentissue gravestone that would have been given to a Union veteran and, if I'm not mistaken, john A Hatch, who was a Mokinian, a fellow Civil War veteran, was instrumental in getting this gravestone here for John Van Horn's grave. He was really active in Veterans Affairs and our listeners will remember him from our episode about Zap Taco. He was the one he's buried here too.

Israel: 30:30

And do we believe this is where he's actually buried? Yes, Okay so when. John Hatch got the stone that was at the time he passed Like around that time.

Matt: 30:42

Yeah, it was around that time.

Israel: 30:43

yeah, he was okay.

Matt: 30:45

There were a few veterans Union veterans from the Civil War who were buried here and weren't in the greatest of circumstances when they died. So Mr Hatch was able to work some connections and get these gravestones put out for them, as well as Bill Semler who later founded the News Bolton.

Israel: 31:04

Can you show us John Hatch's?

Matt: 31:06

cemetery. Yeah, he's right on the other side.

Israel: 31:08

Yeah, okay and if there's anybody notable on the way, oh yeah, I mean yeah, we'll walk right past. This is probably going to be one of a couple visits that we do out here, because clearly this is yeah, oh absolutely, and we're getting a nice, you know, sunset here coming soon.

Matt: 31:27

Yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, no, there's. There's a lot of really really interesting stories here. Right over in here is, uh, dick mcgovany. He's got to be. I think he's right over here, let's see. Oh yeah, here he is here, let's see.

Israel: 31:55

Oh yeah, here he is 1958.

Matt: 32:01

So this, this is the grave of Dick McGovern. His real name was Walter, but everybody just called him Dick and he lived in Mokina. For he was almost 100 years old when he died, lived in Mokina most of his life. There were little little time frames throughout his life where he would go somewhere else and work for a little bit, come back to Mokina. But he was. He was real Mokinian and there's a million stories about him and we'll be out here until dark if we tell them all. But he was a really unique guy. He was a lifelong bachelor and sort of like one cell wooden jail. He bought it from the village in 1917, had it moved off to a few acres he lived on on La Porte Road, set it down and he made that his home all the way up until the time he died in 1958.

Israel: 33:02

That's amazing, incredibly interesting. That is really amazing, incredibly interesting. Yeah, we have another McGovney, george McGovney.

Matt: 33:09

Yep, george McGovney was uh was Dick McGovney's younger brother there's almost a 10 year age difference and some of the infant children from the George McGovney family.

Matt: 33:23

So this is the Jones family plot, right here, of Noble and Clarissa Jones, along with some of their children. Noble Jones, who was born in 1834, was Mokina's second mayor after Esaias McGovern. He served I think it was two non-consecutive terms in the 1880s and 1890s, I'm not mistaken, and he holds a distinction of being the only mayor of mokina to have been born in a foreign country. Really, he was born just barely over the border into canada, ah wow, and so technically a different country. But he was a very, very successful man, was probably the wealthiest man in Mokina in the 19th century. He was very active on the board of trade, with buying and selling and like all the stuff that those guys do, and he was probably in all likelihood, mokina's first regular commuter, because it was noted back in the 19th century 1870s, 1880s that he was taking the Rock Islands to and from Chicago every day and that was something that was noticeable.

Israel: 34:38

Enough to put it in the newspaper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow.

Matt: 34:41

Absolutely Well, I mean. Mr Jones got something in common yeah, exactly An early commuter? Yeah, exactly Thanks.

Israel: 34:44

Absolutely Well. I mean, mr Jones got something in common. Yeah, exactly yeah, an early commuter.

Matt: 34:46

Yeah, exactly, thanks for leading the way, Noble Jones.

Matt: 34:48

Yeah, that he did all right, that he did for lots of people. But yeah, he also in the 1860s and 1870s kind of that immediate post-Civil War era got very successful selling farm implementslements like reapers and stuff like that uh in mokina and he had clients all over the place and uh, what's also interesting, he died in uh in 1909 and uh, his house stood. It's kind of an interesting story about noble jones's house. Uh, the jones house stood on second street where uh John's Church is now, and when they built the church the church had bought the Jones House and then sold it to two bidders who split the structure. One was moved kind of closer to where Frankfurt is now but the other is still in Mokena on 3rd Street, Kind of a little across from well, he probably wouldn't care across from Dave.

Israel: 35:51

Kropp's house Sure behind St John's. Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, interesting Anybody else we can peek in on before. Again, the sun's looking nice coming through the trees there.

Matt: 36:06

Yeah, it does.

Israel: 36:06

Probably won't be able to see.

Matt: 36:08

It's very atmospheric. Yeah, yeah, we got another Civil War veteran right here of which we've got, yeah, we got about a dozen or so Union veterans buried in Marshall Cemetery. This is another interesting one, a gentleman by the name of John Collins. His marker is very weathered and hard to read nowadays but he served in the the 50 was it the 52nd or the 53rd illinois volunteer infantry and uh was a musician, he was a fifer in that, in that regiment, um, and it's interesting, he, you know, he, came back to mokina.

Matt: 36:46

I born in england, uh, but came to mokina, uh, after the war, uh, little ways after the war, lived in town for the rest of his life on front street. Uh was like dick mcgoveney, a bachelor. Uh never got married, uh lived alone with a bunch of dogs and cats and, it's interesting, when he passed away in I believe it was 1906, nobody really knew how old he was. So there are a couple different obits for him in the local papers and each one gave these astronomical ages for him, like one said he was 110, one said he was like 102, um, but I've I've taken a deep dive into his life and I believe when he died he's probably more uh, more so in his 80s. He appears to have been born around 1823, 1825 or thereabouts so how did somebody get to 110 years old from I?

Matt: 37:48

I have no idea. He, he must, he must have been. He must have just looked really really old. Oh, wow, uh, he was, um, he was very um I'm trying to think of a nicer word to say than decrepit. When he got old, because he was, at one point, the pension bureau, because he got a pension for his service in the war, wanted him to go to their doctor in Joliet to get examined to see you know what the basis of his claims were, if he was, you know, as bad off as he said he was. And his doctor from mokina dr sorby was his name wrote to the pension bureau and said this man would not survive the trip to joliet if he had to make it to joliet.

Matt: 38:35

Yeah, yeah, described his uh described his skin as being like tissue paper oh my gosh, uh. In his later years. So yeah, one of our John Collins, one of our many interesting Civil War veterans of Marshall Cemetery.

Israel: 38:48

So you said you think this is the older, the older gate.

Matt: 38:53

I think so, even if it is old. I don't think it's necessarily historic old, I just know that this gate I'm trying to remember if this little arch was even here. I just remember there was a gate, a kind of an ornate gate like excuse me, like this one here as far back as the 90s, when I first started coming here for the first time, did we?

Israel: 39:21

stop here. I don't think we did.

Matt: 39:23

no, I mean, let's talk about the McGovernies, yeah this is one of the few different McGovernie plots here in the cemetery belonging to the family of Esaias and Matilda Jane McGovernie. And as we know, Esaias was our first mayor took office in 1880 when the village was incorporated and just had a lot to do with the development of Mokena, the building up of Mokena. He was a starting right about 1850 or thereabouts and he was still a young man. He became a justice of the peace in Frankfurt Township as Frankfurt Township had just been formed. At that point frankfurt and mokina villages did not exist yet.

Matt: 40:10

Um, and when he became justice of the peace so he's in charge of um, marrying people and also dealing out legal punishments to people and stuff like that he had to sort of like take an oath that said he had never engaged in a duel before. So that was one of the things he had to do in order to become a justice of the peace. Became a lawyer, uh, did was. It was an attorney for many, many years, uh, but then must have been around in the 1870s, early 1870s or so. He opened a store in Mokina, a general store. It was pretty big, it was multiple rooms. It was described as in the building it was in and that was very successful for a long time.

Israel: 40:58

And isn't it true? So my home was built in the backyard of his home, correct, yeah, exactly.

Matt: 41:05

Yeah, that was his property. The Azaias-McGoverny homestead was on the corner of Front and what then, or at least in the early 1900s, was called Neathammer Avenue later changed to Midland. That would be on the northeast corner. Home is still there and his property went all the way to First Street. So eventually his family sold it to the Lochter family who then built your house in 1916. But yeah, marshall Cemetery is very interesting. Just every, every grave is somebody who just has an interesting story played some role in the history of mokina, uh, even though we're, excuse me, technically a new lennox township.

Israel: 41:53

But um, yeah, as I walk, that's what like. I keep stopping because I think, oh, like, like variety you know, you know, yeah these are all the people we've talked about. You know on our episodes and you've written about and you know it's neat to to connect that. Oh absolutely yeah it is. We do see a number of kind of stones, like another one here that you know had fallen off, or yeah, yeah, some damage, but like so you know who? Who would be responsible for repairing stuff like that?

Matt: 42:27

I don't know I don't know if the township would be, since they're the ones that care for it, or if it would be, yeah, I don't know if it would be somebody else. There are people who, uh, you can hire that repair historic gravestones. Uh, we just had one in saint john's cemetery on wolf road and also in pioneer cemetery oh really that did a lot of work. Yeah, yeah and it looks great.

Israel: 42:51

So there's a really cool uh, I think it's a youtube channel or a guy that records his restoring old uh graves. I think I've seen that, and it's really interesting because he ties it in with telling a story. But you know the work they do to clean them and then you know they jack them up and reset the foundation of them and yeah, it's, it's really really great. Oh, yeah, no, it's really cool.

Matt: 43:16

And there's a lot of work that goes into it. I've been through this newer portion of the cemetery a few times and I don't know any of the names on any of these gravestones out here. But yeah, no, there's a lot of interesting stuff out here.

Israel: 43:45

Yeah, beautiful place.

Matt: 43:46

Yeah, it is Glad we were able to make it out. We'll have to do another one. Thank you.