It is planned that the NSDAR will honor two Revolutionary War soldiers by marking gravesites at the Vaughn Hill Cemetery in Wood River Twp, Madison Co., Illinois.
The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution will place commemorative markers in the cemetery for the unmarked graves of two soldiers, Pvt. Anthony Alexander Harrison of Virginia and Pvt. John Cornelison of North Carolina.
Stones will also be placed on those of the wives of soldiers John Ratton and Martin Pruitt.
Wood River declared the cemetery an historic site in 2004. One of the oldest cemeteries in the Illinois, a number of the area’s first settlers are buried in the historic Vaughan Hill Cemetery, which lies along Vaughn Road/Illinois Route 111.
Early pioneers buried in the cemetery include those by the name of Vaughn, Haller, Starkey, Jones, Kendall, Berry and Lawrence. The oldest gravesite in the cemetery dates is that of Sarah Pruitt, dating to 1806. The victims from the Wood River Massacre are also buried there in a common grave.
According to information from the Madison County Genealogical Society, there are about 125 burial sites in the cemetery. However, it is reported that volunteers have plotted as many as 158 graves.
Read more about it in the February 5, 2009 edition of the Telegraph.
Trying to find Charles G. Vaughn and Susannah Yowell Vaughn that lived and believed, died in the area. I am a historian from Joliet, Il. having recently the job of locating a living descendant or other willing to talk about these two individuals and the possiblitiy of burying a child in Joliet, IL back in the 1830’s. The child was buried in our first cemtery which has been abandanonded since the 1850’s, and always thought not to exist. During construction in 2008, several tombstones were unearthed, one of them I believe is the daughter of Charles and Susannah. If I can find a relation or family cemetery, I can request as well as the family, to have the tombstone erected in another cemetery. I need your help. Is it possible that either individuals were buried in this cemetery? I have them, Charles and Susannah living in Madison Co., Edwardsville in the 1880 census with three children, two of them are females, however, neither one of them belong to the tombstone. This child would have been born between the year of their marriage or 1846-1850. The tombstone is made out of cut Joliet limestone.
Hope you can help solve a mystery and help me bring this little girls tombstone home to her family.
Feel free to call me at 815-207-1099 which is my cell.
Thanks in Joliet, Illinois
Gina Wysocki, historian and Board Director for the Will County Historical Society.
Gina,
Are you sure it is not Charles Wesley Vaughn and his wife Susannah?? They are both buried in the Vaughn Cemetery. I have restored the cemetery in 2005 and have been collecting info on all the people buried in the cemetery since then. I do have a connection to the last living Vaughn Decendent. I will do the best I can to help you.
Vickie Wyman
spunky1969@frontiernet.net