Clark's Chapel
Fortress of Religion • Rose bush memory.
Clark’s Chapel was an important factor in Lilburn’s life. It was a spiritual and social center which built strong bonds of community fellowships. The church was organized in 1822. When Lilburn was gathering his cemetery data, he determined the earliest grave was closed in 1824 and that all of his grandparents, half of his great grandparents and scores of other relatives were buried there. As a child, he attended services and the many social activities; as an adult he played for services, weddings and funerals. He frequently wrote of the Chapel. One such article appeared in the Farmland magazine in May of 1970. It follows:
Fortress of Religion
Clark’s Chapel has been a fortress of religion in the Boonslick Country of Missouri for 146 years. It stands on a hill to which the people who dwell on the rich land surrounding it have lifted their eyes as a symbol which has influenced them “to do justly, to love mercy and walk humbly.”
The large graveyard, with many generations sleeping together, extends down hill back of the church and along the ridge to the east.
My mother and father were born and reared within a couple of miles of each other with the site of the old church in between. As children they walked up the hill on week days to school taught in the church. On Sundays they rode with their parents to hear the preaching. Later, as husband and wife under the weight of life’s responsibilities, it became a sanctuary where they sought inspiration.
In the course of more than four score years, their lives touched others of five generations who came to Clark’s Chapel, from the earliest settlers to the last babies sprinkled at the altar.
Nobody knows how many times they came up the hill when relatives and friends were laid to rest in the churchyard.
Until they joined the hosts at rest in the churchyard, it was their gentle pleasure to make a trip here every Memorial Day, to walk around and lay flowers on the graves. I accompanied them carrying the baskets of flowers.
It was as if they were visiting with old friends, not unmindful of their strengths and weaknesses. These were not sad occasions. But there was something sacramental about the manner in which they performed some rites of remembrance.
Especially at Sallie’s grave to which they always went first. She was my father’s first wife of a year and my mother’s sister. Both of them had adored her in life and the passing of sixty years had not diminished their memories. As mother arranged flowers brought from home, father went to his grandmother Chandler’s grave nearby.
“I wish I had enough flowers to cover some of the graves completely,” my mother would say. “I must bring more next year.” Here is Aunt Hannah’s grave...she was the sweetest thing to me on our trip to Yellowstone, more like a sister than an aunt...and this is Mrs. Casey’s, how I loved her...Grandma Chandler’s rose bush is in full bloom as always...when we children used to go to her house, she always made us do what she called “stints” of work before we could go out to play. How ashamed I feel now at having stuck my tongue out at her when she turned her back. It is hard to make amends with flowers. How long ago it seems.
“I’ll never forget the last time Sister Fannie and I went to visit her. We rode horseback. We had to ford Sulphur creek. Right in the middle of it, Fannie’s horse reached down to drink, the saddle girth broke and Fannie fell right into the water. And, she had on one of the beautiful silk dresses she bought when she married. I’m saving the big red peonies for Fannie’s grave.”
“And here is Napoleon Gearhart’s grave,” my father took the thread of conversation, “he was such a promising young man when he was carried off so untimely. He was Annie Booth’s sweetheart and some thought they were engaged......Uncle Noah rests here, nothing new to him for he rested all his life from cradle to grave.
“And Aunt Sukie is buried here beside him. Although she was a powerful church member before, she would never darken the church door after they bought the organ. She was against any musical contraption, even a tuning fork,” my mother resumed.
“And her brother Sidney buried here beside her used to plant everything in the sign of the moon and pa used to tell him he would do better to put it in the ground. Look at these three little tombstones all alike put up for the three little children Uncle Noah and Aunt Sukie lost, almost right together during the cholera epidemic of 1851. Do you suppose their great loss had anything to do with them naming the next boy and girl born to them, Sodom and Gomorrah. They used to call him “Soddy” and her “Mote.”
“And here is Mr. Nance’s grave and big tombstone with a globe on top of it, the latter an emblem to him of a world to conquer. don’t you recall how he defied the Missouri river at flood time? He shook his fist at it and told it if it fooled with him, he would turn it upstream?
“He used to pray so fervently in church. Maybe if he had asked the Lord in the proper spirit he might have helped him do it. But he was always so independent, even when the ladies put spittoons in the church for the convenience of those who chewed tobacco. Why he wouldn’t even spit in a spittoon!
“And poor little Sophy Jordan sleeps here. She just laced herself to death, tied her corset string to a bedpost and pulled until her ribs just overlapped. Finally she went into galloping consumption. How silly all of us were trying to have waists like wasps.”
Here my father took over. “Didn’t you tell me that vanity carried off cousin Sarah Jane Gearhart too? That she took off her flannel underwear in the wintertime to go to a dance, caught a deep cold which took her right into galloping consumption? Here is her grave. Let’s drop some flowers on her resting place.
“Poor Richard Kimsey. He was a handsome, misguided youth. Quantrell shot him off his horse during the Civil War right up the road nearby and he was buried here. I doubt if he has ever had a flower on his grave for none of his folks lived around here. One won’t be amiss from us even if his band of so-called bushwhackers did raid our farm and steal my old mare.” My mother added, “and he took Miss Guss Gallway’s button charm string and rode away with it tied to his horse’s tail.”
“What a long time since old man Murphy died,” continued my father as we went on down hill, the supply of flowers diminishing rapidly. “He made all the coffins for people around here, even made his own and had it ready. Kept it under his bed.”
“Dear Cousin John Lee,” said my mother, “do you remember the terribly hot day he was buried? The young preacher who loved him like a father was so overcome (by emotion) he couldn’t go on with the service. He announced that all should come up for the “last look” before they carried him out to the cemetary for interment, and that next Sunday they should all come back for the funeral.
Now and again they paused to gaze over the bottom farms or toward the rolling hills to remark on the beauty of the landscape. They would point out familiar places, old homes where they visited and played as children. The site of the pioneer town of Franklin, the race track, the distillery. The old forts of 1812, and in the distance the hulk of Mt. Pleasant church of 1812, now moved and used as a farm barn. And nearby, the city of Boonville with its silvery highway bridge.
To them the broad scene was like a stage upon which generations of men, women and children, had enacted dreams of conquest, sport, religion, war and love for more than a hundred years. Of remembered tales that were told.
Year after year as I heard them recount the stories of those who had lived and died upon the acres around Clark’s Chapel, they made the actors come alive for me. They moved them like puppets in their roles and made them speak their lines.
Dear to the heart of my parents were the Memorial Days. Truly they were their heritage, simple perhaps, but endowed with the grave of appreciation.
Rose Bush Memory
The following “Remembering is an Eloquent Moment” is another example of Lilburn’s writings about the Chapel:
My great-grandmother Sarah Gearhart Chandler was buried at Clark’s Chapel Cemetery one hundred and one years ago last February. Someone planted a rose bush on her grave.
I first noticed it after Memorial Day was established and I went with my parents, carrying baskets of flowers to lay on the graves of departed relatives and friends. They didn’t remember who planted the rose bush. It was of considerable size and full of blossoms with dark red velvety petals. My notice of it might have been casual had I not seen my father go to it, pause as if choosing the prettiest flower then cutting it off with his knife.
My father, Taylor Kingsbury, Sallie Smith and her younger sister, Alice, (my mother), were born on neighboring homesteads in the Clark’s Chapel community and grew up together.
They also went to school in New Franklin at the Seminary. He rode a pony about four miles, while the girls walked from Sunnyside, the present home of C.I. and Clara Smith. Each day after school Taylor would gallantly offer to let Alice ride his pony home which she liked. Then he walked with Sallie.
Even as far back as their Clark’s Chapel schooldays, according to old folks who remembered, Taylor and Sallie were recognized as sweethearts.
They were married in 1870. The next year she died tragically during childbirth. Recovering outwardly from shock and grief or perhaps to console each other, Taylor and Alice were married a year later.
In all the years I accompanied them to Clark’s Chapel Cemetery on Memorial Day, never was there a time I was not reassured of their devotion to the memory of Sallie. They went directly to her grave where it seemed to me mother was going to lay all the flowers.
As she arranged them carefully, my father would go to the bush on his grandmother Chandler’s grave, and select the prettiest rose, bring it back and lay it on Sallie’s grave. It was an eloquent moment.
As long as father lived, this was his chief Memorial Day observance. After he died in 1938 it seemed to me he had established a tradition which should not die with him. So for 39 years it has been my pleasure to cut the prettiest rose from my great-grandmother’s bush (it has always been in bloom on Memorial Day) and lay it on Sallie Smith Kingsbury’s grave.
The rose bush which grew and bloomed so profusely since nobody knows when, appeared frail and bore no more than a dozen blossoms. But one was enough.
Recently I visited the cemetery and the rose bush was gone. Not a vestige of it is left. Evidently the caretaker thought it was old and useless and a hindrance to a clean swath of blue grass. He didn’t know anybody revered it. I should have told the story sooner.
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