WE HAVE TWO CEMETERIES on Boonslick Trail Farm. We found out about the Harris family cemetery when we bought the farm in 1995. But we didn’t unearth the fact that Salt Creek Cemetery was on our land until 15 years ago.
That was because it’s across the blacktop road from the rest of the farm. When our farm was originally surveyed for legal purposes in 1824, surveyors used the range lines to mark off property lines. When a “new” road was built, for convenience, a corner of the farm was cut off. So the cemetery—which is less than an acre in size—is separated from our farm by the road. We thought it belonged to the South Howard County Historical Society, because they had erected a sign with the cemetery’s name.
One day at our former Missouri Life office in Boonville, a man came in and introduced himself as Roger McMurry, the local pastor for the Disciples of Christ church. He asked if he could have my permission to mow the cemetery. I said, “Why would you ask me?” He replied that he had checked with the Howard County Assessor’s office to find out who owned the cemetery, and they told him that it was on our property and that we had been paying taxes on it. I went up to the assessor’s office, and they confirmed that the cemetery was officially part of our farm.
We were glad to find that out because this graveyard is much more than a piece of Missouri history; it is very much a piece of American history. It was the site of the first Disciples of Christ church west of St. Charles, built in 1817. The foundation stones of the church are still there, and at least a dozen graves with markers show birth dates before the Revolutionary War! In fact, the Daughters of the American Revolution also have a marker at the cemetery. No one had been buried there since 1867—over 150 years ago.
One day, I was driving home on the blacktop road to our farm, and rounding the curve where the cemetery was, I saw something I could hardly believe. There were about 20 vehicles and a big black hearse at the graveyard.
The cemetery is in a beautiful spot, overlooking surrounding farmland and hills. We added four signs to the one with the cemetery’s name.
As there was a solemn burial ceremony already underway, I parked with the other cars, and I waited until most had cleared out before I approached a young man and asked him what was going on. He had just buried his father who had owned land near our place. His dad had told him that it was a peaceful, beautiful spot and that he wanted to be buried there. The young man had hurriedly arranged a “green burial,” which is a natural burial without embalming and a vault.
The young man also told me he had talked to a judge at the Howard County Courthouse, who had told him it would be okay for him to bury his father there. The pastor conducting the ceremony told me he also had requested that the young man call me, but he did not call. Nor had the undertaker firm handling the burial.
I called the Howard County judge, who had once been our attorney. He was as mad as I was because he had never been called and said, even if he had been, he couldn’t have given the young man permission.
I read the Missouri statutes to ascertain what the law says. Best I can tell, it is illegal to bury someone in a so-called abandoned cemetery on private property.
No matter what the law says, what should we have done? Should we have hired a lawyer and gone after the young man to move his father, whom we knew to be a nice man? Should we have pursued the undertaker? The young man didn’t even honor our request for a less conspicuous stone marker, so a modern gravestone now sits alongside the historical ones.
We ultimately decided to pay for four small signs to be added above and below the existing Salt Creek Cemetery sign. They read: Historic, Inactive, Private, and Est. 1817.
So far, no one else has been buried there.
GREG WOOD
PUBLISHER
DIGGIN’ IT UP
• All photos courtesy of Greg Wood.
This article was originally printed in the October 2025 issue of Missouri Life.
