The Wood Cemetery

Pictured: Wood Cemetery Grave Marker

Reprint from our November 22, 2012 blog posting at https://bunkerhillhistory.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-wood-cemetery.html

The cemetery is located two and three quarters miles south of Woodburn.  Land was acquired in 1832 during President Jackson's administration.  First burials were possibly members of a wagon train of which cholera claimed many lives.  Several generations of Wood and Davis families are interred in the oldest section.  There are approximately two and a half acres in this cemetery.

Gazette News: August 1, 1957

The Wood Cemetery is one of the oldest places in Bunker Hill Township.  The man who gave the land was David Bush Wood, who was born in 1813, the son of James E. Wood, Sr. and Susanna Renfro Wood, who were early settlers of Illinois Territory and Bunker Hill Township.

In the year 1842, David B. Wood purchase the farmland of Aksiah Tompkins.  On this land were a number of graves, including David's sisters' grave who was buried in 1823.  Mr. Wood had in transfer of land two deeds made, one for one acre where the graves were, to Bunker Hill Township as a burial ground.  In 1905 or 1906, Alfred C. Wood, on leaving Illinois, deeded one-half acre to this cemetery and it was named in honor of his family and the Wood families who he had inherited the land from.  He migrated to South Dakota, then to Nebraska.  He died there at the age of 91 years and nine months.  His remains were brought back here and buried on the land of his childhood.  The two deeds of this land are recorded in the courthouse in Carlinville.

Some of the pioneer families buried there are: Wood, Davis, Coffee, Scott, Heyde, Hook, Kneadeline, Gregg, Thomae, Hill, Hilyard, Ridgley, Saltznear, Schuetz, Johnson, Jacobi, Pyatt, and many others.

The cemetery was cared for by member of some of the families buried there in 1842.  Many of these people were prominent in early Macoupin County history.  Prior to 1955, Dr. Walter Hilyard donated enough to build a new fence and others donated to put the cemetery in nice order.

Some of the people buried there are veterans from early Indian, Revolutionary, French and Indian, Civil War, and World War I.

Some of the marker are made by hand of sandstone and the markings on some are completely obliterated.  We are endeavoring to place all war veterans on the honor roll of this cemetery and their country.

--Cite this story: The Bunker Hill IL Historical Society. "A Look Back in Bunker Hill History." Bunker Hill Gazette-News, April 23, 2020, November 22, 2012

Redford, Carol, and Betty Triplett. "Bunker Hill History." In Reflections: A History of the Bunker Hill-Woodburn Area, p. 125. Bunker Hill: Bunker Hill Publications, 1993. Provided by the Bunker Hill Historical Society.