Last spring I had a bizarre conversation with an individual on Facebook messenger related to historic and prehistoric features on the local landscape. It began while he was commenting on some local page - maybe the local history page, I really don’t remember. He mentioned his discovery of an effigy mound shaped like a turtle located near a major intersection local to both of us. I scrutinized the area on Google Earth and indeed there was some sort of structure or shape there that resembled a turtle. Curious as I am, I drove there the following day to find that the turtle was actually a retention pond filled with phragmites and cattails. There were no “mounds” to speak of. Later, we again engaged in a discussion through DMs and he was adamant that this was the work of an ancient culture from ten thousand years ago. My issue was twofold - I visited the site and saw no obvious mounds (he knew the site only through digital maps), AND historic aerial maps dating to 1938 show a featureless farm field. He dismissed this evidence against his claim and continued presenting his own evidence - modern LIDAR images and a more recent historic map that seemed to show a path through the adjacent woods toward the area in question. He suggested that at one time this was a well-known artifact and may have been well-visited by people. If this were the case, then there should be some documentation available today. While I haven’t viewed every single resource available on Chicago area Native American culture, I’ve read enough to know that it is extraordinarily unlikely that this turtle isn’t anything more than a landscaper’s art project.
However, he also brought up the existence of a long-forgotten settler’s cemetery located in the same general area. This one he did find in person, but because of physical limitations, he hadn’t visited in years. He reluctantly provided a vague description of the surrounding area and it wasn’t long before I pinpointed the possible location of the cemetery within a small grove of trees - once again, with the help of historic and current aerial maps. In the 1930s, there appeared to be a small graveyard in the middle of a farm field. Back then, there weren’t any roads leading to the graveyard, only a narrow footpath that seemed to wind around neighboring properties. A glance at my 1874 plat map of Wayne Township showed that the cemetery was on the property of a "M. C. Haviland", whose home was indicated as being across a set of railroad tracks that bisected the property.
M. C. Haviland, or Milton C. Haviland, was born in April of 1817 in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York. In the 1850, 1855, and 1870 censuses, Milton was listed as a farmer in Wayne (oddly, he was recoded as living in Bloomingdale in 1860 - this is likely an error). His wife was Emily Ann Haviland nee Adams. She was born in about 1820, also in New York. Records show that Milton and Emily had four children together, and by 1870, a "domestic" (probably a hired housekeeper) and a day laborer. Milton died on April 2, 1902 in Iowa and was buried at Seney Cemetery in Plymouth County.
While there is a fair amount of information about Milton floating around, as well as information about Emily's family tree (her great-great-great-great grandfather emigrated to the colonies from England in the 1600s), finding information on Emily isn't as easy. Back in those days, women were seen more as "supporting roles" than equals, and records confirm that. Records claim that Emily was part of the household at least during the 1870 census, and that Milton was widowed by the 1880 census, when he was sixty four years old. What I discovered may challenge that information.
I visited the graveyard for the first time last June. With me was Matt and Nathan. What was then a farm field is now a prairie. We located the sad-looking cluster of trees and worked our way toward it. A dense thicket of brambles must be traversed in order to gain access to the gravestones. Nearly insufferable. Even then, once you’ve reached your destination, you are surrounded by a luxuriant growth of poison ivy. I’m not saying this to discourage visitors, I'm just telling it like it is.
And there it was. Concealed by decades of weedy growth was an old limestone headstone, still erect though hardly legible. I was able to transcribe the following:
“A. Adam(?)
DIED
Dec. 25, 1865
Aged(?)
(illegible)”
Erosion and a healthy splattering of lichenous growth had really done a number on this stone. But I do believe that this is the final resting place of Emily Ann Haviland, nee Adams.
None of Emily's children were named Adam or anything starting with the letter "a", so that rules out any of her children. What about the 1870 census, which listed Emily as a part of the household, aged fifty one? Perhaps it was assumed that she was still alive. Remember, by 1870 the household contained a domestic and a day laborer. Convenient for a widowed husband who still had a teenaged son at home and a farm to tend to. In my time researching genealogy for various projects, I've found that errors are very commonplace. I believe that Emily died on Christmas day in 1865 around the age of forty five, leaving at least three children (one son, George, seemed to fall off of the map after the 1860 census and may have died as a teenager).
Curiosity got the best of me last weekend so I decided to revisit the site. This time it appears as though someone else has been here recently. There was a suspicious trail through the tall grass, and because human beings generally suck, the stone has been knocked over.
.jpg)
However, I decided to check around to see if there were any other stones. To my surprise, I saw another one maybe ten feet away, deep in a tangled mass of vegetation. I made my way through, getting cut and stabbed in the process. This second one was also knocked over although it looks to have been so long ago. Through the strongly dappled sunlight I was not successful in identifying any sort of etching on the exposed side of the stone, and I was neither in a good physical nor ethical position to turn the stone over. Is this the final resting place of son George?
Here is a detail from the 1874 atlas. You can see the cemetery, marked by an enclosed cross. The farmhouse, pictured as the black square across the tracks, disappeared sometime between 2005 and 2007. However, the Yolton farmhouse directly across the street still stands today. It was constructed just in time for the atlas - in 1874.
In a day and age where virtually every square inch of our urban and suburban landscape is trampled by the caravan of society, it is interesting that a place like this exists in its current condition. But for how long remains a question.
