Democrat Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll carry it the rest of the way for you. Out here in Mills County, the land around Democrat has been home to settlers since 1878. But a community can settle for a good long while before it has to reckon with what comes next, and Democrat Cemetery did not come into being until the turn of the twentieth century.

The earliest grave we can put a name and a date to belongs to Lee Ella Deen, one year old, daughter of W. F. and M. L.

Deen, who died in November of 1904. That is where the documented record begins. Then, just a few months later, in February of 1905, a man named J.

L. Chancellor deeded three acres of the surrounding land to the citizens of the Democrat and Rock Springs communities, setting it aside as a public burial ground. Three acres given over, formally and legally, so that neighbors would have a place to lay their neighbors down.

Scroll through the early graves and you find infants. Children. A number of them, taken by the influenza epidemic that swept across the whole world in the early twentieth century.

No corner of the globe was spared that wave, and Democrat was no exception. You also find veterans. Men who served in the Civil War, in World War I, in World War II, all of them eventually coming home to these three acres.

The cemetery kept receiving them, kept reflecting the full shape of area history, and was still in use when the twenty-first century came around. Some places just endure. Democrat Cemetery is one of them.

What the marker says

Although settlement of this area dates to 1878, this graveyard was not established until the turn of the 20th century. The earliest documented grave is that of one-year-old Lee Ella Deen, daughter of W. F. and M. L. Deen, who died in November 1904. In February 1905, J. L. Chancellor deeded the surrounding three acres of land to the citizens of the Democrat and Rock Springs communities for use as a public burial ground. Among the early graves in the cemetery are those of a number of infants and children, victims of the influenza epidemic that raged worldwide in the early 20th century, and veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II. A reflection of area history, the cemetery remained in use at the turn of the 21st century. (2000)