Baker Cemetery, El Dorado, Kansas

Baker Cemetery, also known as Welcome Cemetery and Fairview Township Cemetery, was established in 1873 on land once owned by David and Sarah Baker.

The burials in the center of the cemetery are all Bakers. Over half of the 32 known burials at Baker Cemetery are members of the Baker family. Most of the Bakers have matching granite gravestones, a sign that most were added at the same time.

Baker family

Today the cemetery is on privately owned residential property about halfway between Potwin and El Dorado along 196. Even though it is on private property, Baker Cemetery is accessible to the public. The cemetery is still active; the most recent burial here was in 2021.

The land is not deeded as or classified as a cemetery, as far as I can tell. Source

Baker Cemetery isn’t very photogenic, and there isn’t much to look at here. You won’t see this cemetery unless you go down Hopkins Switch Road, and are paying attention to your surroundings.

Cemetery entrance

The first burial on what was once the Baker family farm was thirteen-year-old Ainsworth Baker, David and Sarah Baker’s second oldest son.

Ainsworth was helping a neighbor herd cattle when he was thrown from the back of the mule he was riding, but his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged for about four miles.

Walnut Valley Times, El Dorado, KS, Jun 27, 1873

Who Was David Baker?

David Milton Baker was born in Monroe County, Ohio in 1830 and was the second oldest of seven siblings. He was a member of the 77th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was captured at the Battle of Marks’ Mills. He was imprisoned by the Confederacy for almost a year.

On April 22, 1864, authorities ordered the 77th Regiment, the 36th Regiment Iowa Infantry, and the 43rd Regiment Indiana Infantry to escort a supply train from Camden to Pine Bluffs. As the train passed through Marks’s Mills on April 25, Confederate forces attacked and overwhelmed the 36th Iowa and the 43rd Indiana. Assigned to guard the train’s rear, the 77th rushed to the scene of the attack, with the Southerners forcing most members of the 36th, the 43rd, and the 77th to surrender. The Confederates forced the captured Northerners to march to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, where the 77th’s members remained until exchanged in February 1865. Source

But before the Battle of Marks’ Mills, David got in a bit of trouble with the Union. He deserted his position in January 1863, and when he returned in October that same year, he was arrested and charged with desertion. He was found guilty and had to forfeit seven months pay. It was immediately after this that he was sent to guard the supply train in Arkansas and was captured.

David returned from imprisonment at Camp Ford with significant injuries that he struggled with until his death. His right hip and leg were severely affected from laying down for ten months, leaving him with a permanent limp.

David’s declaration for a pension in 1887 stated that he “contracted disease of right hip and leg, the origin of which was due to the general exposures incidental to the life of a solider in said prison.” Source

David also had some other common complaints I’ve seen from other soldiers, like malarial poisoning and chronic diarrhea. I obtained David’s full service, medical, and pension files from Gopher Records, and you can view my copies here for free.

David & Sarah Baker

David married his first wife Sarah Amelia Varner in Ohio 1854. The couple came to Butler County with four children in 1870 and were among the first to settle in the area. Sarah bore one more child as they pioneered the prairie outside El Dorado, making them a family of seven.

Sarah died in 1875, two years after her son Ainsworth died. She left behind four children at home, the youngest of which was just three years old. Sarah was the second burial on the family farm.

Sarah shares a stone with David; even though he remarried twice and his third wife is buried here, his descendants chose to honor him on the same stone as his first wife.

David & Mahala Baker

David married Mahala Page (née Brown) in 1876, about six months after Sarah died. This was documented in Butler County, Kansas marriages, 1861-1885, in the newspaper, and in David’s pension file.

Butler County, Kansas marriages, 1861-1885

Mahala had two young boys of her own from a previous marriage; her husband Alfred Page died in 1871, probably on the way to El Dorado from Illinois, and she had been raising the boys alone.

The marriage with Mahala didn’t work out. According to affidavits in David’s pension file, the couple divorced sometime before 1880, but I couldn’t find an exact date of their separation. Mahala has a Find a Grave memorial at Belle Vista Cemetery under her first married name, but the City of El Dorado has no record of her being buried there, and we searched for a gravestone but did not find it.

David and Martha Baker

David married Martha Bishop (née Smith) in 1880.

Butler County, Kansas marriages, 1861-1885

Martha was previously married to Johnson Barlow, with whom she had five children. He died in 1875, and then she married John Bishop in 1877. John’s wife had just died that same year, leaving him with multiple children to raise. This may have been partially the reason why he married Martha so quickly, and also partially the cause of the melancholy he struggled with. He drowned in the Walnut River in 1879, supposedly on purpose.

Walnut Valley Times, El Dorado, KS, Nov 14, 1879

John may have been buried at Baker Cemetery, though I couldn’t find a record of it. One of his sons, Elias Bishop, once owned the land where the cemetery is today.

Martha married David within two months of her second husband’s death, with enough time left on her biological clock to have three children with David. They stayed together for 29 years, until David died at the end of 1908. Martha died ten months later in 1909 and was buried here, when Baker Cemetery was called Welcome Cemetery.

David’s Death

David died in 1908 from chronic nephritis and dropsy.

The Butler County Democrat, El Dorado, KS, Jan 8, 1908

Other Bakers at Baker Cemetery

Since most of the Baker gravestones look the same, I’ll only share a few more.

Joseph Baker Family

Joseph Baker, one of David and Sarah’s sons, and his wife Hattie Pollock are buried here.

Joseph and Hattie buried at least three young daughters at this cemetery—Cora (9 months), Orpha (age 9), and Clara (age 2) all have gravestones here.

Another of Joseph and Hattie’s daughters, Sylvia, lived to be 85. She passed her teaching exam at age 16 and was a teacher at several schools in Butler County. Later she was a typist or secretary, and at one point she was the credit manager of the Southwest Cracker Company in Wichita. She was also very musically talented, providing the music for the weddings of her friends, but she never married.

Sylvia was close with her brother Glen; as adults, they lived together. Glen worked in the oil fields in El Dorado all his life, and as far as I know, he never married either, but his obituary mentioned a foster daughter, foster grandchildren, and foster great-grandchildren. The woman mentioned as his foster daughter is buried here, too. Glen was 92 when he died in 1994.

Jacob and Minnie Baker

Jacob Baker was another son of David and Sarah Baker. His wife Minnie shares a maiden name with Jacob’s mother. That’s because Jacob and Minnie were cousins; Jacob’s mother Sarah Varner and Minnie’s father Lavosier Varner were siblings. Jacob and Minnie had at least seven children together.

Other Burials at Baker Cemetery

When David moved from this land after Sarah died in 1875, there were just two burials here that we know of, but the burials didn’t stop, and there were more than just Bakers buried here.

Salinda Bishop (née Bauman), wife of Elias Bishop and step-daughter-in-law of Martha Baker, was buried here in 1880. This is presumably Salinda’s gravestone; you might see a couple of letters of her name like maybe “AL,” there is a “WI” potentially suggesting “wife of,” and beneath that what could be the beginning of “Elias,”, if you are imaginative enough.

A neighbor, Edward Steward, was buried here in 1885. I wasn’t able to find out anything about Edward, other than he may have worked in a laundry in Emporia in 1877, and he had mail in El Dorado in 1878.

The gravestone may have displayed his photo at some point.

Sarah Taylor (née Hobbs) died in 1888 at age 39. She had four children; the youngest was just six and the oldest just fourteen when she died. Her original footstone is still here, presumably near its original position.

The gravestone of Charles Boyles is a little strange. The actual day the eighteen-year-old died in 1894 was never chiseled here, just the month of August.

But Charlie didn’t die in August. A newspaper article from September 27, 1894 says that Charlie died September 21st and was buried September 22nd.

The Butler County Democrat, El Dorado, KS, Sep 27, 1894

John Lewis Fry died while he was deer hunting on a crisp fall Sunday. The cause of death listed on his death certificate was cardiac arrhythmia and acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack.