Maple Park Cemetery
A New Cemetery
A proposition to purchase the Fair Grounds
Missouri Weekly Patriot, January 6, 1876, page 3
"A subscription is being made to a fund for the purpose of purchasing the Fair Grounds south of town and establishing a cemetery thereon[Maple Park]. Shares in the proposed association are $50 each and are being promptly taken. We regret that the Agricultural Association is willing to abandon these grounds to any purpose; but as such seems to be the fact, we certainly hope that the subscription for the purpose indicated will be successful. The location of the present City Cemetery [Hazelwood Cemetery] is disgraceful, and had long been a source of regret to all of our citizens. Its distance is such that only those who own carriages or are able to hire them can ever visit it. It seems as if selected to put the dead farthest from sight, and where they might soonest be forgotten as if it were desired that the sight of a cemetery should never remind us that they ever existed, or prompt us to acts of kindly remembrance.
"A visit to the graves of the dead is full of satisfaction to the living, and of beneficial influences. Cemeteries should therefore always be located where they are easily accessible to all – where friends can frequent them, and loving hands adorn and beautify them. But how many are there in this city, who, during a whole year, are able to make the journey to our Cemetery! Those in humble circumstances are practically prohibited from enjoying the satisfaction of visiting it and graves that they would fondly care for remain unseen and neglected. That it should be so is disgraceful, and we hope that the movement to establish another in a more appropriate locality will be successful. There is no good reason why the resting places of the dead should be hidden away from the public sight, and our people do not wish that it should be so.
"Again, a half day’s journey, on funeral occasions, is required to go and return, and in consequence many who would otherwise be glad to join funeral processions are prevented from doing so. And in unfavorable weather it has often occurred that [families], not well known, and of too limited means to hire carriages, have conveyed their dead to the grave unaccompanied by a single friend. This melancholy spectacle has frequently happened. It ought never to occur again, and our citizens who are responsible for it should join heartily in the movement to provide more appropriate arrangements for the future."
The Maple Park Cemetery Association was deeded the land in June 1876. The original City Cemetery had been located at Campbell between Mt. Vernon and State before being superseded by Hazelwood Cemetery as the City Cemetery. Information from the Ozarks Genealogical Society cemetery publications.
Find this article at http://thelibrary.org/blogs/article.cfm?aid=3762