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Forest Home
Cemetery
Love and
Valor Cemeteries
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The Love and Valor Cemeteries
The Love and Valor Cemeteries of Henry County, Iowa
by Charles F. Larimer
Now
available on Amazon.com @ $11.95, the Iowa Store in the Burlington "Iowa
Welcome Center", and in the Museum in Swedesburg, Iowa.
With the
help of Bill and Carol Klopfenstein and many others, we have mapped the
cemeteries in Henry County, Iowa where the soldiers and citizens of Love
and Valor are buried, along with other notables that we found along the
way. The largest of these cemeteries is Forest Home Cemetery in Mt.
Pleasant, Iowa. The cemetery furthest away is Laurel Grove Cemetery in
Savannah, Georgia. We also mapped where many of the people from Love and
Valor lived within Mt. Pleasant.
Table of
Contents:
Introduction
Cemeteries in Henry County, Iowa
The Love and Valor Cemeteries of Henry County,
Iowa
Greater Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
Mt. Pleasant - North Detail Map
Mt. Pleasant - South Detail Map
Historic Buildings in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
Cemeteries
a. Forest Home Cemetery in Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa
b. Old City Cemetery in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
c. Green Mound Cemetery
d. Finley Chapel Cemetery
e. Old Baptist Pioneer Cemetery (with Jim
Stockton letters)
f. Hickory Grove Cemetery
g. Oak Grove Cemetery
h. White Oak Cemetery
i. Wayland Cemetery in Wayland, Iowa
j. Shively Cemetery
k. Winfield Cemetery in Winfield, Iowa (6.5
miles east of Highway 218)
l. Jagger Cemetery near Danville, Iowa (15
miles east of Mt. Pleasant)
m. Aspen Grove Cemetery in Burlington, Iowa
n. Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, Iowa
o. Bondurant Cemetery in Bondurant, Iowa
(near Des Moines)
p. Spring Lake Cemetery in Aurora, Illinois
q. Elgin Cemetery in Elgin, Kansas
r. Andersonville Prison Cemetery in
Andersonville, Georgia
s. Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah,
Georgia
t. Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah,
Georgia
The P.E.O. Sisterhood - Connections Between Love
& Valor and P.E.O.
Three Personalities from Mt. Pleasant During the
Civil War -
James Harlan, Samuel Luke Howe, and Henry Dean
Clay
Camp Harlan
Civil War Regiments from the Mt. Pleasant Area -
1st Iowa Infantry, 1st Iowa Cavalry, 4th
Iowa Cavalry, 11th Iowa Infantry,
15th Iowa Infantry, 16th Iowa Infantry, 18th
Iowa Infantry, 19th Iowa Infantry,
25th Iowa Infantry, 37th Iowa Infantry, 45th
Iowa Infantry
GPS Listings
Selected
Cemetery Listings:
Forest Home
Cemetery
in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
Ritner, Emeline
Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa
December 12, 1862
Dear Jake,
"Where are you tonight, and what are you doing? Oh I would so like to know.
I have got the blues most horribly tonight and the wind is blowing a perfect
streak. Your old canteen is bumping & banging against the wall in the porch,
trying to keep time with the howling of the wind, and the dismal patter of
the rain."
Farewell dear, Your own Em
Ritner, Jacob - Co F, 1st Iowa Infantry; Captain Company B, 25th Iowa
Infantry. Age 33 at enlistment, nativity Pennsylvania.
Officer's
Hospital on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee
July 7, 1864
My Dear Wife,
No, my dear, if only through this baptism of blood, our nation, freed and
purified from the blighting curse of slavery, shall lift her radiant
forehead from the dust, and crowned with the wisdom of freedom go on her
glorious way rejoicing. I shall count my past suffering and shattered health
only as the small dust in the balance compared with the priceless blessings
of peace, freedom, and national unity, which they may have contributed
however slightly to purchase.
Your own, Jake
Old City
Cemetery
in Mt.
Pleasant, Iowa
Lee, Alexander - 1st Lieutenant, Co H, 25th Iowa Infantry. A tavern
keeper before the war, he was age 48 at enlistement.
Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa
May the 6th, 1863
Dear Jake:
I forgot to tell before that I had got a sample of your rations. Mr. Lee
sent home a parcel of stuff in his box of clothes that he said the soldiers
had to eat. Mrs. Lee sent me some of it. One mess was potatoes mashed and
crumbled fine and dried. The other was a mixture of pumpkin and forty-one
other things mixed it up in a dish. The awfulest looking stuff I ever saw. I
wondered that the government would feed men on such stuff. It was hardly fit
for hogs. I said I knew you didn’t eat any of it and I don’t believe you do.
You would be very near starvation if you did.
Your Em
Finley
Chapel Cemetery
Payne, C. W. "Wils" - Sergeant, Co B, 25th Iowa. Age 22 at
enlistment, nativity Iowa. He was born in 1840 in his parents log cabin, and
was one of the first white babies born in Henry County.
Napoleon,
Arkansas
January 15, 1863
Dear Emeline,
Wils Payne volunteered to carry the National colors in the fight, and is
praised by everyone for his bravery. He is one of the best men we have, and
does more for me than any other man I have. When we march he always carries
our coffee pot and frying pan and cooks for us. I don't see how we could do
without him.
Your own, Jake
Old
Baptist Pioneer Cemetery
Stockton, James H. - Co B, 25th Iowa Infantry. Age 19 at enlistment,
residence Trenton, nativity Indiana. Emeline had known James since he was a
young boy.
Mt. Pleasant,
Iowa
Friday Morning
July the 10th, 1863
Dear Jacob,
Tom Stockton came after us to go up to James' funeral. It was preached by
Mr. Wilson from Missouri. He brought us back on Monday. There was a great
crowd there. Tom told me to give you his best wishes every time I write to
you. He thinks he can never be kind enough to you for sending Jimmie home.
He gives me about ten bushels of bran to feed my cow, hauled it down and
wouldn't have any pay.
Em
Hickory
Grove Cemetery
Yount, Isaac M. - Co B, 25th Iowa Infantry. Age 18 at enlistment,
residence Mt. Pleasant, nativity, Indiana. He was killed in Yazoo Valley,
Mississippi, December 28, 1862, during the Vicksburg campaign. Reverend
Thomas Corkhill [buried in Forest Home in Mt. Pleasant] wrote:
On the evening before the battle he had said to his brother, who is a
member of the same company: "If it shall be my fate to fall in the coming
struggle, or at any other time during this war, I shall try to meet it
calmly and with a spirit of resignation I have never felt before. I shall do
my duty under every circumstance, hoping that all will be well."
When he had fallen, he was taken by his brother and several others to the
rear, but his wound was mortal, and in about twenty minutes a lifeless
corpse was all that was left of one of our bravest and best soldiers. A
narrow grave was dug upon the field, and
Calmly yet sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We traced not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone in his glory.
The Rebels may speak of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,-
But little he'll reck if they let him sleep on
In the grave where his comrades have laid him.
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