You will want to read until the end.
Beginning soon after the organization of the Dallas County Historical Society in 1966, the society began the task of reading cemeteries and publishing the results in four volumes, which they titled “A Reading of Dallas County, Missouri Cemeteries, 1834-1996.” The members of that society did an impressive job with the project. However, the prefaces in those books state:
Many small family burying places have disappeared over the years, and in the older cemeteries, the earlier markers have become lost, broken, or illegible; many graves were marked only with a rough field stone, thus identity is lost except to a few of the descendants to whom such information was verbally handed down.[i]
There is no record of Jeremiah Haston, Sr. being buried in any of the known cemeteries in Dallas County, Missouri. The same is true for several of his early family members. The unknown location might be expected of earlier graves, but generally (with exceptions), burials in the 1870s and later were locatable and marked.
[i] Leni Howe, compiler, A Reading of Dallas County, Missouri Cemeteries, 1834-1996, Volumes I-IV, preface.
For the place of Jeremiah Haston, Sr.’s burial, Joan Moore Gillett (descendant of Daniel Haston through Jeremiah) wrote “Haston Cemetery” in her records, as if other people would know the location of that graveyard. She said he died in Charity, Missouri, “1 mile N-Buffalo Road.” I assume that was where he was buried. From the village of Charity, it is almost exactly one mile north on the road to Buffalo to a high spot on a 40-acre tract owned by, Minerva, Jeremiah’s oldest daughter who lived with him and took care of him late in his life.
As a child, Joan Moore Gillett (born 09-18-1922) occasionally visited two of her great-aunts who lived within a few miles of the old Jeremiah Haston home site and the Minerva property. They were granddaughters of Jeremiah, Sr., from whom Joan probably learned much about the early Jeremiah Haston family. In 1876, they were certainly old enough (Lucinda, age 14; Samantha, age 23) to have known their grandfather and to have clearly remembered his death and burial. They were likely there when his body was lowered into the ground. I am reasonably confident that Aunt Cinda and Aunt Samantha showed Joan the old Haston family burial grounds. If so, it was findable in the 1930s.
Based on my research, I speculated that there was (and is) a family burying ground (“Haston Cemetery”) somewhere on the property that Jeremiah Haston, Sr. or Minerva owned. But a spot on Minerva’s land was the most likely because her father was probably living with her when he died and her probable home site was on the highest section of either of their lands and safely away from swampy land.
Not only do we not know the location of Jeremiah’s (Senior’s) grave, but that is also true of his son, Jeremiah M.C. “Mack” Haston, his unmarried daughters, Minerva and Regina, and some others. We now know, from obituaries, that Jeremiah’s grandson, Isaac S. (Sylvester) Haston (son of Andrew V. F. Haston) and Jeremiah MC “Mac” Haston’s wife, Nancy E. Haston, were interred in the Dallas County, MO “Haston Cemetery” in 1910 and 1913. We can probably assume, then, that Jeremiah Haston, Sr.’s son, Jeremiah M.C. “Mac” Haston was buried there. Like Isaac S. Haston, his uncle Jeremiah MC “Mac” Haston was a Union veteran of the Civil War.
That’s six probable burials in the family cemetery: Jeremiah, Sr. Haston (son of Daniel Haston), unmarried daughters Minerva Haston and Regina Haston, Jeremiah M.C. “Mack” Haston (son of Jeremiah, Sr.), Nancy E. Haston (wife of Jermiah M.C. “Mack”), and Isaac S. Haston (grandson of Jeremiah, Sr. and son of Mack’s brother, Andrew V. F. Haston). But there’s probably at least one more.
According to a December 10, 2020, phone call with Kathleen J. Dill, owner of the previous Minerva Haston tract (and two others near it), the family thinks there may have been an old homesite in the wooded area of the NE tract. Minerva C. Haston acquired this tract in 1874, according to the 2006 hand-drawn plat created by Judith A. McClung and Leni Howe. It was issued on July 30, 1878, according to the Bureau of Land Management patent. 1874 is two years before Jeremiah Haston, Sr. died!
Loren D. and Kathleen J. Dill purchased the 120 acres outlined in red on March 15, 1990. It includes the higher ground Minerva acquired in 1874.
The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Civil War’s Union Army. More than two decades after the war, the G.A.R. began cleaning and decorating the graves of deceased Civil War Union veterans annually in May. That was the beginning of our National Memorial Day.
The first year (1889) the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) of Dallas County, Missouri assigned committees to clean graveyards where veteran Union soldiers were buried and decorate veterans’ graves with flowers, no one was assigned to the Haston Cemetery. However, apparently, someone in the Haston family called attention to that oversight.
I found Dallas County newspaper accounts (1891-1912) for 13 subsequent years in which these assignments were made. In ALL 13 of those years, the Haston Cemetery was one of the graveyards assigned for cleaning and decoration of veteran graves: 1891, 1895, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1904, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912. I assume Decoration Day activities were carried out in the other years of that span, but committee assignments were not reported in the newspapers, as far as I have been able to discover.
So, the location of the Haston Cemetery was certainly known in 1912, when it was cleaned and decorated, and in 1913, when Nancy E. Haston (widow of Union veteran, Jeremiah M.C. “Mack” Haston) was buried there. And I think we can assume that (at least) Nancy (1913) and Isaac S. Haston (1912) had relatively “modern” gravestones.
In April 2026, Sharon and I spent a week in the Greene County, MO and Dallas County, MO area. I met with Charlie Dill of the Dill family that owns the old Minerva Haston tract, as well as two other 40-acre tracts there. Charlie took us to the area where I suspected Minerva’s house might have been and where we might find the “lost” Haston Cemetery. While roaming in the wooded area in the northeast section of Minerva’s acreage, Charlie stumbled upon foundation stones of what had been an old house. After marking that spot, we walked westward out of the woods approximately (I’m guessing) 20 yards to a a level spot among some very old (100+ years old) oak trees, a spot that has a beautiful view overlooking a valley in (what was) Minerva’s 40 acres. Charlie made the comment that this would be an ideal spot for a cemetery.
Charlie and I had both heard that there was a man in Dallas county who had been locating a lot of other lost cemeteries in the county. Later, we learned he had found 60 or more! That evening I was able to make contact with him, James Williams, and set up a time for Charlie and me to meet him the next day at the Dallas County Historical Society building in Bufflo, the county seat. James had heard about the Haston Cemetery (from old newspaper records) but didn’t know where it was. I explained what we had found and James agreed to meet with Charlie later (after I had returned to Tennessee) to see if he could locate the Haston graves.
James had to wait until the exteme summer heat diminished before he could look for the graves. In August, during a slight reprieve from the heat, he made arrangements to meet Charlie and Charlie showed him the spot we had found. When they arrived at the spot Charlie thought would be ideal for a graveyard, it didn’t take James long to find seven graves. And nearby, he found what appears to be a pile of broken stones, likely gravestones that been broken by livestock and someone had gathered into a pile.
There is a lot more work to be done: More permanently mark the locations of the graves. Uncover what are thought to be the remnants of the gravestones. Decide how to keep this historic Haston family cemetery from becoming “lost” again and how to maintain it as reasonably as possible and feasible. And more.
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