Council Hill Cemetery, Sumner County, Kansas

Council Hill Cemetery in Belle Plaine Township is a small rural cemetery near Peck, connected to Council Hill Church. The cemetery was established in 1881.

There are well over 500 individuals buried at this rural “pale city of the dead,” which is currently managed and maintained by Belle Plaine Township. Several graves here pre-date the founding of the cemetery and are among the earliest gravestones found in Sumner County.

The cemetery was established on land donated by Marcellus Piatt.

Marcellus Piatt (1851-1917)

Marcellus Piatt purchased land in Sumner County in 1878 and established what he called Council Hill Farm. He later donated a portion of his land for Council Hill Christian Church.

According to the 1880 agriculture census taken June 4, Marcellus had 240 tilled acres and 120 undeveloped acres. He valued his farmland and buildings at $3800.

Council Hill Church formally opened June 20, 1880, the same month the census was taken. Council Hill Cemetery was chartered the following year, June 2, 1881. The first burial in the chartered cemetery occurred later that month.

1883 plat map showing Marcellus Piatt’s land, now reduced to 160 acres. The church and the cemetery are on the map. Source

Marcellus penned his own obituary three months before he died and it was published in the Belle Plaine News, May 31, 1917. Who better to tell about his life than him?

“Marcellus Piatt was born at Huntsville, Logan county, Ohio, June 17, 1851. He was the first-born of a family of six children. His father, John Piatt, was of French parentage and his mother, Mary Cummins, was of Irish-German descent.

“In 1854 his parents moved to DeWitt county, Illinois, where he was reared on a farm. His early education was obtained in the country school. When he was nearing his majority he attended the Atlanta high school. His longing for an education was intense. He did chores for his board staying with Dr. W.F. Kirk. This was the winter of 1871-72. In the fall of ’72 he began teaching at the Laughery school on Salt Creek near Chestnut in Logan county. In the fall of 1873 in company with J.H. Wright, of Atlanta, Illinois, he went to Lexington, Kentucky. Here he entered the College of the Bible to prepare for the ministry. He came in contact with Robert Milligan, president and professor of the Bible college. To be under the instruction and influence of such a man was of untold value to any young man. Coming home from this institution, the fall of 1874 he took the Laughery school again for another term.

“On January 3, 1875, he married one of his pupils, Miss Ada Margaret Braucher and this ended his attendance at school until the spring of ’85 when he entered the State Normal School of Kansas believing he was better adapted to teaching as a life work than preaching. Here he graduated in June 1889.

“Marcellus Piatt was baptized on the 27th day of December 1863 in his thirteenth year, by the sainted Dudley Downs. He was intensely religious and always believed the Restoration movement of the Church of Christ was strictly according to the Bible, and threw his whole soul and life into its propagation. He began to preach in his teens and had a great desire to be a preacher of the Word but preached incidentally, not from preference, but because he thought his natural ability led him into the teaching profession. In every locality where he taught a church organization followed if there were none when he went.

“Nearly all his life though he served as an elder of the Church. He was true to the Book, being liberal in religious belief when he could do so as a matter of opinion. He hated extreme liberalism and extreme narrowness alike. There was no compromise on God’s Word with him.

“After marrying he spent four years farming Mt. Airy, his mother-in -law’s farm in Illinois. Feeling the necessity of a home of his own and being unable to secure one in Illinois he turned to Kansas. In the summer of 1878 in company with Thomas Fletcher, an old friend and neighbor, he went to Sumner county and bought Council Hill farm and this has been the scene of his activities since, with the exception of ten years, from 1885 to 1895, while he attended the State Normal at Emporia and Superintendent of schools at Kerwin and Phillipsburg in Phillips county, and of Meade in Meade county, and of Pratt in Pratt county, all in Kansas.

“His children are: Aria Franklin, born at Mt. Airy, Ills., and now married and living on a farm near Lipscomb in Lipscomb county, Texas;

“Jennie May, born at Council Hill, Jan. 25, 1880 and died Jan. 8, 1882;

“Arthur Raymond, born at Council Hill, March 30, 1883: now married and living at Los Angeles, Cal.

“Claude Braucher, born at Emporia, Kans., Aug. 18, 1887.

“Marcellus Paul, born at Council Hill, Oct. 19, 1896.

“Marcellus Piatt loved Nature. When he improved his Council Hill farm he planted about two-thousand fruit and forest trees and later planted a commercial orchard of more than three thousand apple trees on his farm near Zyba. He loved music, art, birds and flowers with a passionate fondess.

“He loved his relatives, his home and his friends. One boyhood friend, Simpson Ely, he corresponded with regularly for a period of thirty-eight years. Another boyhood friend and neighbor, Sylvester B. Robinson, of Princeton, Indiana, met him last year, 1915, at their old home in Illinois, spanning a lapse of fifty years from their parting in childhood. J.H. Wright, a room mate at Bible college, and he have been fast friends all these years. While he counts his friends by the score yet he had few confidants. Those named were special friends.

“He does not claim perfection for himself. ‘There are none perfect, no not one,’ yet he has many traits, by the grace of God, to be proud of. He never used tobacco; was never intoxicated; never took the name of God in vain; never sued anyone; never was sued but once and then averted a trial by compromise; never saw a case wholly tried in court; never was on the witness stand but once. Notwithstanding this record that any person might be proud of, he is freely ready to admit that he has weaknesses and sore temptations and that he has ha his battles and that he has not always been victor. He would not be human if this were not the case. These conflicts have driven him to the arms of the Crucified One where he has always obtained comfort and help as every human heart can do who will trust in the Lord.

“Having a desire to be helpful in his community, he gave the land on which Council Hill church is located and the land which makes the Council Hill cemetery, where rest his neighbors and friends who have been associated with him in all the church, school and other enterprises which builds a community for happiness.

“Marcellus Piatt has kept a daily record of his life doings since his young manhood covering a period of about fifty years.

“Another unique thing in his experience is the fact that he has written in a book provided for the purpose an annual letter to his wife every anniversary since they were married, covering now, 1917, forty-two years. These letters cover the most important events of the years in their married life and this record is a source of much pleasure to them in their journey down the western slope.”

Marcellus is buried at Council Hill Cemetery with his wife Ada.

The First Family of Sumner County?

The gravestone for Sarah and Goldsmith Walton has been painted and placed atop a new base sometime in the last fifteen years. The granite base claims that the Walton’s were “the first family of Sumner County.”

The family did stake a claim in Sumner County in July 1870, and they were among the first to settle here, but they weren’t the first, at least according to Richards’ History of Kansas published in 1883.

At least thirteen other white people settled here before the Waltons arrived, and several families were said to have arrived on the same day with them. There were at least six other “first” families of Sumner County who arrived at the same time as the Waltons.

July 5, 1870, A. D. Clewell, his wife and six children; G. C. Walton, his wife and nine children; L. Cambridge, his wife and seven children; J. B. Leforce, Sr., his wife and six children; William Leforce, his wife and one child; J. B. Leforce, Jr., and his wife settled in lower Belle Plaine township. These were the first women and children to settle in the county.

History of Sumner County, 1883

Goldsmith Chandlee Walton died at home from paralysis. Sarah left a touching epitaph to her late husband, signed with her initials.

“My dear husband has left me and gone to rest. Hours will be lonely until we meet again, my husband. S.W.”

“His toils are past, his work is done, he fought the fight, the victory won.”

Sarah was Goldsmith’s second wife. She outlived him by nearly two decades. Her side of the gravestone contains an epitaph for Goldsmith, presumably from his children.

“Our father has gone to a mansion of rest, from a region of sorrow and pain, to the glorious land by the Deity blest, where he can never suffer again.”

“Honored, beloved, and wept, here mother lies.”

Gravestones at Council Hill Cemetery

There are seven people buried here who died before the cemetery was established. These may have been reinterments from nearby farms, or they may have been originally buried here.

David Spencer died in January 1872.

Infant George Bull died in July 1872.

“Our Bobbie” Alldridge died in September 1872.

Perlina Hurst died in December 1878. She shares a now unreadable stone with her brother William who died in May 1880.

Sarah Malcom died in 1881. The bottom of her gravestone has broken off and gone underground.

Jacob May also died in 1881. He’s buried next to his mother Mary, who died giving birth to him. I didn’t see Mary’s gravestone, and Jacob’s gravestone was under about a half inch of dirt.

“A kind father mourns in thee a child lost, the poor, a friend who felt what friendship cost.”

Hilary Hurst died in 1883 at just two days old. Her gravestone may have been designed by W.B. Caton of Winfield.

Paul Cain was just nine months old when he died in 1886.

Richard Dunlap and his adult son Murton both died in July 1887 from different causes. Richard had been sick and bedridden for several years, and Murton died from tuberculosis. There appears to have been a space left between them for one or more people who were not buried here.

“Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, from which none ever wake to weep, a calm and undisturbed repose, unbroken by the last of foes.”

“A precious one from us has gone, a voice we loved is stilled, a place is vacant in our home, which never can be filled.”

Charles “Charley” Bowles was said to be “a very exemplary young man highly esteemed by all who knew him.” His funeral at Council Hill Church in 1887 was “one of the largest ever seen in that neighborhood.”