DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Fred Eden platted the town of Eden in 1882, and right from the start, he set this particular patch of ground aside for the dead. That tells you something about a man — that before he'd finished laying out a town for the living, he was already making room for what comes next.
The earliest tombstone belongs to an infant boy, five weeks old, the son of Frederick and Susan Shutt — she was a Reynolds before she married. That baby was buried in 1882, the same year Eden staked the whole place out. And he is far from alone among the small stones.
Several graves here belong to children and infants, each one a quiet, heavy testament to what pioneer life on this land actually cost. The adults weren't spared the hardship either. John Emmett Molloy and Charles Edward Waring — two names this ground holds — both were killed in accidents with horses.
Horses. The very animal that built the West, and this cemetery carries two men who didn't survive one. Then there's the woman named Carson.
Oral history says she was killed by a runaway horse in 1887 and buried here in an unmarked grave. No stone. Just the story, passed down until somebody made sure to write it on this marker.
That's the only monument she's got, and now you know her name. Estimated thirty-three or thirty-four burials are believed to have taken place in Pioneers Rest Cemetery. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, only fifteen tombstones were still standing.
Fifteen. Out of three dozen souls. But the cemetery endures — a chronicle, the marker calls it, of Eden's history.
And that's exactly right. Some chronicles are written in ink. Some are written in stone.
And some, like the woman named Carson, are written in nothing but the memory of the people who refuse to forget.
What the marker says
Fred Eden platted Eden in 1882, setting this land aside for a cemetery. Though older burials may be present, the earliest tombstone is that of the five-week-old infant son of Frederick and Susan (Reynolds) Shutt, buried in 1882. Several graves for children and infants bear witness to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. Adults, too, faced difficult times. John Emmett Molloy and Charles Edward Waring both were killed in accidents with horses. According to oral history, a woman named Carson was killed by a runaway horse in 1887 and is buried in an unmarked grave. Of an estimated 33 or 34 burials believed to have taken place here, only fifteen tombstones remained standing at the dawn of the 21st century, but Pioneers Rest Cemetery continues to be a chronicle of Eden's history. (2000)